BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Jennifer Lopes is Head of International Affairs at jugendschutz.net. jugendschutz.net is the cross-national bureau for the protection of minors on the internet in Germany.
Jennifer Lopes has a legal background (University of Passau, Germany) and is responsible for the international relations of jugendschutz.net. She is the project manager concerning the involvement of jugendschutz.net within the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) and the European Financial Coalition (EFC). She has been working for jugendschutz.net since 2001.

29 September, Wednesday, 14.30 – 16.30

Parallel session: Sesion for law enforcement

Presentation title: European Financial Coalition

The European Financial Coalition against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Online (EFC) was formally launched on 3-4 March 2009 at the “An Indecent Profit” conference by M. Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission.

Major financial, internet and technology corporations have joined forces with international policing agencies, the European Commission and specialist child protection non-governmental organisations to track and disrupt the trade in child abuse images and confiscate the proceeds of crime by those who are engaged in the commercial distribution of child sexual abuse images on the internet.

Led by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre – the UK’s dedicated policing organisation for protecting children from sexual exploitation – and funded by the European Commission, the EFC brings together stakeholders engaged in the fight against the commercial distribution of child sexual abuse images.

The aim is to facilitate and support pan-European police operations focused on this area of criminality, with cross-sector solutions targeting, in particular, the electronic payment systems used to purchase child exploitation and abuse images on the internet.

The main aim of the EFC is to identify long-term solutions to commercial child abuse websites, whether those solutions are technological, financial, through law enforcement operations or legal.

This will be achieved in part by having law enforcement participation from as many of the member states as possible to ensure the sharing of data, intelligence and best practice in this area, and to work closely with the financial industry.

The EFC is currently collecting as much data as possible on child abuse websites in order to have a full strategic picture, such as:

·         the extent of the problem

·         the motivations of organisers

·         the motivations of buyers, and

·         the financial processors utilised. 

There is no one single ‘silver bullet’ in eradicating the issue of commercial child abuse websites. The EFC believes in working constructively in a multi-stakeholder environment to identify a range of solutions to permanently dismantle the architecture behind this crime.

For more information please visit http://www.ceop.police.uk/efc