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Standard Chartered Bank is to encourage financial institutions to
commit themselves to combating internet child pornography by sharing
information about websites selling the material and stopping payments
passing to them.
The London-based bank, which does most of its business in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, has said it will ‘take the lead’ by recruiting financial institutions for the Financial Coalition against Child Pornography. The initiative was started this year to ‘eliminate the commercial viability’ of child pornography by stopping the money flow through internet sites.
The coalition, which is run in conjunction with the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, has support from 21 mainly US-based banks, credit card companies, third party payment companies and internet services businesses.
However, Standard Chartered group executive director Mike Denoma, who is heading the bank’s drive for more members, said the problem could be tackled only if many more companies signed up. The bank has begun recruiting in the 56 countries in which it operates and aims to have made presentations to banks and other ‘key actors’ in 75 per cent of those countries by the end of March 2007. It piloted the presentations for six months in Singapore, where senior executives also made efforts at the recent IMF-World Bank meetings to raise awareness of the coalition and enlist more members. So far the response has been slow.
Some estimates suggest that child porn websites have global revenues of between $5billion and $20billion (£2.7bn and £10.8bn) – potentially eight times that of the vitamin industry.
Denoma said the coalition, if it grows, can make bigger inroads than other policing methods. ‘You can certainly go after the individual paedophiles and websites, but the faster way would be to try to cut off the payment link,’ he said.
The London-based bank, which does most of its business in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, has said it will ‘take the lead’ by recruiting financial institutions for the Financial Coalition against Child Pornography. The initiative was started this year to ‘eliminate the commercial viability’ of child pornography by stopping the money flow through internet sites.
The coalition, which is run in conjunction with the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, has support from 21 mainly US-based banks, credit card companies, third party payment companies and internet services businesses.
However, Standard Chartered group executive director Mike Denoma, who is heading the bank’s drive for more members, said the problem could be tackled only if many more companies signed up. The bank has begun recruiting in the 56 countries in which it operates and aims to have made presentations to banks and other ‘key actors’ in 75 per cent of those countries by the end of March 2007. It piloted the presentations for six months in Singapore, where senior executives also made efforts at the recent IMF-World Bank meetings to raise awareness of the coalition and enlist more members. So far the response has been slow.
Some estimates suggest that child porn websites have global revenues of between $5billion and $20billion (£2.7bn and £10.8bn) – potentially eight times that of the vitamin industry.
Denoma said the coalition, if it grows, can make bigger inroads than other policing methods. ‘You can certainly go after the individual paedophiles and websites, but the faster way would be to try to cut off the payment link,’ he said.
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