Global crime and terrorism need an international response

With organised crime and terrorism increasingly operating across international boundaries, Europol Director Rob Wainwright talks about the agency's efforts to keep up.

Describing himself as "not the archetypal hardline cop and not a great disciplinarian", Europol director Rob Wainwright is a lot more candid than you would expect. This is someone who has worked at the cutting edge of intelligence analysis to combat organised crime and terrorism, for more than 20 years – first in the UK and then at a supranational level.

The 44-year-old speaks Spanish, English and Welsh and depicts his own management style as "open and engaging". He explains further: "I aim to create a happy atmosphere at work so that people can be more productive. It is, perhaps, a more modern style of leadership – but I am still very much focused on creating and communicating an inspiring vision of what this organisation is all about to my staff. Externally, I am serving a community of police teams around the European Union and so I have some very important stakeholder relationships with police chiefs, ministers and people in the commission and parliament. A lot of my job is, therefore, about external engagement, building networks and working with political agendas as well. It is important to manage these complex set of relationships well."

Europol has 620 staff operating out of its headquarters at The Hague, in the Netherlands. High on the agency's agenda are the new forms of crime and criminal organisations, which have received a shot in the arm thanks to technological advances like the internet and smart phones. "For 10 years, criminal networks have been changing," admits Wainwright. "Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we had these large monolithic drug organisations – particular in Colombia, for example – but since then they have been transformed into more mobile, smaller and more dynamic organised crime groups. And the internet has been the main catalyst for change; it has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for the criminals to target citizens directly – through online fraud, for example.

"These groups are still very resourceful and they are now using an increasingly sophisticated range of malicious software to steal identities and then carry out a whole range of criminal activities – it really is picking up pace. The internet, as it has in general society and the legitimate economy, been a major facilitator. In the last few years, the advances of mobile technology with everyone working off a smart phone have also created new opportunities for organised crime. We see particular vulnerabilities in that area."

So how do the loose capabilities of Europol, which depend very much on member states and do not include executive powers, match up to new forms of criminal networks in the 21st century? "Our mandate covers all forms of serious international crime and international terrorism so our particular interest is in identifying the criminal networks involved in trafficking drugs, trafficking human beings, organised fraud and terrorism," says Wainwright. "We collect data about suspects exclusively from the law enforcement work done at the national level. We are dependent on national authorities reporting to Europol and their investigations. We don't store the records of people that don't meet our thresholds.

"Citizens, meanwhile, have a full right of redress – they can complain to the independent authority or even directly to me if they have reason to believe that we are unfairly processing data about them. There is, of course, a proportional element to all of this. We have to make sure that we have a really good unique and powerful product to sell to member states, which is at the cutting edge of police work in Europe. There is no other agency at the pan-European level that collects so much police information; we are in a privileged position. We have experts from every law-enforcement field from every major agency in Europe. We are transforming our image and improving our profile and credibility through cases like Operation Rescue - against one of the largest child sex-abuse networks in the world. Over two years, our analytical and forensic work helped to crack that case and identify hundreds of child sex offenders, while saving 230 kids. It's a good example of where our unique capabilities have been brought to bear in a really impressive way.

"Over the last year or so, we have had a 20 per cent pick-up in the amount of casework we are doing and the amount of information we are collecting. Law enforcement officers are starting to take us a bit more seriously, but we still have to overcome a certain cultural resistance to get ordinary police officers to engage in the international level – and it is fairly challenging."

Embryonic plans for an EU cyber-crime unit have sent a frisson of excitement through Europol. Those in senior positions at the agency believe it is the logical location for the new initiative. "I do hope the new EU cyber crime unit will fall under the remit of Europol," says the director. "I think it should, frankly, because the vision for this is very much in keeping with what we have here. We have a cyber-crime capability already and if that was boosted by the establishment of this new centre at our headquarters, then we have the ideal home ready for this. Europol has the architecture, the IT capabilities, the professional analysts and forensic experts that are able to crack major cases.

"This centre could achieve a great deal through focusing on the most significant cyber criminals out there and by developing cutting-edge capabilities to support frontline policing operations. It could also develop a community platform for enlisting support, joining up law enforcement, the academic world, industry - if not, the public at large - in a more integrated way to fight crime, including by reporting things online.

"The expansion of internet and mobile technologies makes the threat from cybercrime even more multi-dimensional. It targets citizens, businesses as well as governments and because of its non-conformity with traditional national boundaries and penal codes - it calls for a coordinated response. Our concern is also rising in terms of changes in the illegal drugs market, especially with the expansion of synthetic drugs and the emergence of so-called legal highs.

"Identity theft is also an emerging problem. Identity itself has become a criminal commodity that is bought and sold. It holds the key for criminal groups to carry out major fraud operations. These groups are recruiting hackers in their early twenties, who are developing the malware deployed to steal the identities of consumers – which is then sometimes used to target the individual's own bank account, but also to create new identities to conduct benefit fraud and VAT fraud. This cycle in the underground economy is then completed when the proceeds of these fraudulent operations are even laundered online through virtual payment systems."

Wainwright has strong views on the European Arrest Warrant too. It has faced criticism from pressure groups like Fair Trials International, who have criticised the warrant for its lack of proportionality. In some cases, people have been extradited for going over their bank overdraft limits. "We don't have a specific mandate with the warrant," he explains. "In fact, we are not even routinely copied on the intelligence relating to EAWs. That is a shame because the warrants, therefore, are not being fully informed by the intelligence in our significant databases here – and that is something that could certainly change in the future.

"Eurojust has identified room for improvement including the introduction of some sort of proportionality threshold. If you take the Europol model, which has been developed over 15 years, we have set a commonality of thresholds to our information collection that all member states have signed up to. So we get a fairly uniform standard of data and there is then a more uniform application of our capabilities and work evenly across the EU. That doesn't appear to be the case with the EAW, which is a decentralised instrument. It allows individual member states to apply their general principles in different ways because judicial systems are different in each country. It means that warrants are almost demanded automatically in some countries. It lacks and centralised approach or institutional machinery. There are lessons to be learned here about the way Europol does things."

His comments may enrage the Eurosceptics among the political classes and general population, who believe in national policing and national borders. But Wainwright is keen to point out that he is not advocating some sort of European FBI. "Information processing is very important to the future of fighting crime and terrorism," he states. "As each day goes by, organised crime becomes more global in its nature. There are very few serious crime problems in any country now that can be tackled exclusively within national boundaries. Inherently, we have to conduct a capable international response to the problems and take advantage of the EU institutions, which have been established, including Europol.

"Key to that is information – not just from the public sector, but also other parts of government and the private sector. We have to use the centralised capabilities of this European hub for data-matching exercises that give us an advantage over the criminal in identifying the nature of activity affecting multiple countries. That is where the future lies for Europe and Europol. I am not talking about creating an intelligence agency for Europe, but making better use of existing information and systems.

"Over the last year, Europol has established a secure information exchange network called Sienna. It is the only secure international police system available and it connects all major police forces in Europe on the same platform. It is processing about 12,000 major cross-border operations a year. It is starting to provide the bedrock to a united EU response to organised crime and it speaks volumes for getting a better grip on the information that is out there. I wouldn't go further than that; I am not an advocate for a European FBI. The arrest operations by national police authorities work perfectly fine, we don't need to change them.

"But because the problems are international, you have to work outside the EU as well so we have a very significant external agenda. We hope that, in the future, we can work through the new European External Action Service. But we also have very direct relationships with our US counterparts, with the FBI and other federal agencies and Interpol is a very important partner for us as it has a membership of 188 countries. Whereas we focus on the top end of criminality and specialise in sensitive intelligence across our secure network, Interpol is a more open system connecting a greater number of users with a different kind of police data linked to a greater range of offences. We help each other, of course, and the relationship I have with the chief of Interpol Ron Noble is very close indeed."

Concerns have been aired in the past, though, in relation to the amount of personal data on citizens that Europol stores and the alleged lack of democratic accountability linking the organisation to the appropriate political checks and balances. Wainwright insists he has been a champion of increased scrutiny since taking on the role of director three years ago. "I arrived at a unique moment for the organisation; we were 15 years old so were well established - but on the point of going through a very important transformation into an EU agency. What I have focused is to transform the identity and the capabilities of the organisation – to really establish it as the central European policing agency. We have improved our information capabilities, which we have used to target the most dangerous criminal networks in Europe.

"And the transformation has really brought us into centre stage in the security architecture of the EU and, by default, given scrutiny power over us to the European Parliament. I am a much more regular visitor to the parliament than my predecessor was. For any policing agency, democratic accountability is very important. Europol has unique responsibilities in this regard because we collect so much personal data about the private lives of citizens in Europe and we don't hide that fact. We do it in a highly-responsible way.

"I have been working in the policing and security fields for more than 20 years and the data-protection framework we have at Europol is certainly the most robust that I have ever experienced. We collect, use and store that data according to very tightly-defined criteria, which is regularly inspected by a fully-independent external organisation called the Joint Supervisory Body – formed of government data protection specialists from the 27 member states – to make sure we don't abuse the system. They have access to all of our material so we are very conscious of the fact that we must handle personal data in a very careful way as well as providing accountability and transparency before national governments as well as the EP.

"In the future, I think that EP scrutiny of the agency will increase and I would welcome that. It's about creating a more open Europol – although, clearly we have to keep some of our techniques and intelligence close to our chest. But we are a responsible police agency, acting in a responsible way with a very clear purpose to protect the citizens of Europe from very dangerous threats."

A major plank of Europol's remit relates to counter-terrorism. Even so, the agency was not involved in or informed about Operation Geronimo, which led to the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. "It was very sensitive information that was handled on bilateral channels by the Americans," reveals Wainwright. "But we do have a very strong counter-terrorist relationship with the US – particularly, in terms of the terrorist financing tracking programme. That in the last year has given us an important new dimension to our work. Now, we are taken seriously across the Atlantic as well because we have a very important role to play.

"Counter-terrorism is the area where the greatest amount of conservatism exists at a national level, in terms of inviting the EU to have a frontline role. It is not so easy for us to be accepted in that role. We don't have executive powers of our own or judicial capabilities to do things like freezing the bank accounts of terrorists. We rely on the member states that are working the cases to do that – although, it is very often at our prompting that they would do this. But Europe lacks an equivalent programme to the US Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme – it is a real hole in our security measures right now. We are also very vulnerable to attack from Islamist extremists in the same way as America is and I think we need to have the same range of counter measures as the US has. Work is being done in the commission and the council now to consider a European equivalent and I welcome that."

Meanwhile, some commentators have suggested that the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have created an open door into Europe for terrorists because of the flows of migrants and inherent instability created by government collapse. Wainwright's own stance is not a million miles away from this assessment. "We have a region with political instability that becomes a less governed space so the security capability is certainly not as good as it was a year ago," he admits. "There is an unsettled population, there are migration flows as well as unsecured arms depots. All of this is a fairly potent mix, which creates opportunities for organised crime and terrorist groups.

"We sent some Europol experts down to Italy to help the Italian authorities and Fronted – the EU border security agency - with the migrants arriving. As a result, we found evidence of organised crime groups being involved in exploiting the migratory flow. So far, we have not seen evidence of terrorists groups doing that, but we remain ever watchful."

Money-laundering is another issue high on Wainwright's radar. "We have seen examples of large volumes of €200 and €500 bills, which have returned to Europe after having been shipped by drug traffickers to Colombia and then laundered via the US," he reveals. "Money laundering is always a challenge for law enforcement and we are encouraging our partners to deal with it in cooperation with Europol."

Some police and security officials talk behind closed doors about eventually introducing compulsory identity cards, including DNA records, for all citizens - in order to better combat crime and terrorism. In the short-term, there is little chance of this somewhat Orwellian development. But, is it something that will be inevitable in the long-term? "It is certainly a step too far at the moment, I think," answers Wainwright ambiguously. "In the public-policy space which we all operate in, you always have to draw the right balance between the interests of individual liberty and security. By the way, I don't think it's a binary choice – the two are mutually reinforcing because you can't enjoy liberty until you have security. I am not sure a major European DNA database for every citizen would be the right balance, it would be disproportionate so it's not something that is going to happen in the short term, I am sure."

With that, Wainwright is keen to head off to his next meeting. Before he goes, I ask one final question. Now that he is nearing the end of his four-year tenure as director, which can be renewed just once, is he thinking about post-Europol roles? "I've always worked in the public services and I've always been motivated to try and help people in a less advantaged position than myself – just like millions of police officers, teachers and nurses. I am fortunate to have this fascinating job and I'm happy to stay here as long as ministers are happy with my performance – it's as simple as that." He certainly seems determined to make a real difference, despite not being the archetypal hardline cop.