With around 26 billion connected devices in 2019, forecasted to grow to up 75 billion by 2025, the trust on the internet and the ICT made the world extremely exposed to new cybercrime attacks. The emerge of the Dark Web has favoured the virtual invisible criminals to stay connected and openly trade weapons, drugs or contract killings. Bitcoin has played an increasing role in all illegal activities conducted in this realm.

This means that all criminal justice authorities need, more than ever, basic skills in order to cope with this trend and to cooperate not only at the domestic, but also at the international level.

Improving inter-agency cooperation, but also gaining knowledge of an Joint Investigation Team, while undertaking investigation of cybercrime and parallel financial investigations of online crime proceeds involving Dark Web and crypto currencies, following the criminal money flows and sharing intelligence across international borders were the key elements addressed during the last “Case simulation exercise on cybercrime and financial investigations”.

The activity was organised under the joint project of the European Union and the Council of Europe – iPROCEEDS, from 6 to 9 May 2019 and is the last exercise replicated at the national level, after being carried out in all project countries/areas.

During four days prosecutors, cybercrime investigators, financial intelligence analysts, financial investigation officers and digital forensics specialists from North Macedonia and Turkey, handled complaints of cybercrime, dealt with suspicious transaction reports, investigated and gathered evidence of crimes involving virtual currencies and the Darknet, investigated and prosecuted transnational criminal activity, using international cooperation channels for the  search, seizure and confiscation of proceeds of cybercrime.

• iPROCEEDS project website