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Rabat – The General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) announced that police have responded to 384 cybercrime cases so far in 2019. The majority of the crimes are online scams and sexual blackmail.
A large number of the crimes targeted foreigners living outside of Morocco, according to the same source.
DGSN presented the number during a study day on “sextortion,” organized in the Royal Institute of Police in Kenitra on Thursday, December 5.
“A number of crimes via internet are transborder,” explains DGSN.
The Moroccan authority transferred 61 of the recorded cases to the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol. It also transferred nine other cross-border cases to Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to treat them diplomatically.
DGSN noted that the number of transborder cases has increased over the last year.
The number of cybercrimes concerning exclusively Moroccan parties was 252, with the majority of cases relating to blackmail of a sexual nature.
In 2018, Moroccan police recorded 407 cases of cybercrime.
Morocco’s penal code punishes several types of cybercrime, however, “when the legal text is not enough to formulate a sentence, Moroccan judges can resort to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime,” explains Mohamed El Khadraoui, a member of Morocco’s Higher Council of Judicial Power (CSPJ).
Morocco was the first non-European country to sign the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. The international treaty, signed in 2001, seeks to address internet and computer crimes by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques, and increasing cooperation among nations.
