INTERPOL arrests 1,209 cybercriminal in fresh regional raid

Available data by the African Union has revealed that Nigeria lost about $40 billion between 2001 and 2010 to illicit financial flows.

The Executive Director of African Network for Economic and Environmental Justice (ANEEJ), David Ugolor, revealed that a recent assessment showed that nearly 20 per cent of Africa’s yearly losses of about $150 billion could be traced to Nigeria.

Speaking at the inception meeting of the project titled: ‘Tackling Illicit Financial Flows through Asset Recovery and Management and Countering Money Laundering, Terrorism’, Ugolor stated that the figure underscored why the country had continued to struggle with poor human development outcomes despite its immense resource wealth.

He said the aim of the project was to strengthen the capacity of the anti-corruption agency to be able to comply with the provisions of the Crimes Act and the regulations that had come out from the Act.

MEANWHILE, 1,209 suspected cybercriminals have been arrested across Africa with the recovery of $97.4 million and the dismantling of 11,432 malicious online structures.

These arrests and recoveries were made by the INTERPOL in collaboration with authorities across Africa from an operation codenamed Serengeti 2.0, which ran from June to August 2025.

With about 88,000 victims, INTERPOL revealed this in its latest Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report, disclosing that the operation brought together investigators from 18 African countries and the United Kingdom to tackle high-impact cybercrimes, including ransomware, business email compromise (BEC), and online scams.

INTERPOL said intelligence provided ahead of the raids included suspicious IP addresses, domains, and command-and-control servers, while private sector partners contributed expertise in tracking crypto crimes, ransomware analysis, and digital forensics.