By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
HOW tech giants are responding to the wave of online fraud took centre stage at the June 2026 meeting of the AML Intelligence Compliance Council in the European Parliament.
The bi-annual summit in Brussels gathers top AFC leaders and MEPs. The aim is for industry figures and political leaders to collaborate and address the most pressing issues in financial crime.
The latest summit, held on June 23, kicked off with Regina Doherty MEP warning that companies and politicians must protect consumers.
“A lot of that is around education and digital literacy. I think that’s why this conversation is so important,” she said.
Lídia Pereira MEP then gave some insight into why the EU decided not to make social media companies liable for refunding scam victims.
She said the move risked causing “years of legal uncertainty” and would not have “stopped a single fraudster”.
Following this, the Compliance Council heard a significant update to a landmark EU probe into multiple tech giants.
Last September the European Commission issued a formal Request for Information to Bing, Google Search and the Apple App store under the Digital Services Act regarding financial scams.
The EU demanded that these businesses explain how they prevent paid advertisements that direct users to fraudulent websites.
Rita Wezenbeek, the Director of Platforms at the European Commission’s DG CONNECT, said they have now filed ‘extensive replies’.
EU response to ‘avalanche of fraud’
The conversation then shifted to how banks are coping with the surge in scams.
Paul O’Brien, Bank of Ireland’s Head of Public Affairs, revealed that the lender’s customers reported a 20% rise in the investment fraud cases in the first five months of 2026.
He said that EU legislators could again examine how to stop “these ads getting online in the first place”.
“I think we maybe need to look at, do we extend that principle further in terms of new regulation for the online advertising sector,” he said.
The Compliance Council then heard the perspective of a tech giant.
Liz Halpenny, Legal Counsel for Google Global Affairs, said the company has taken a proactive approach in responding to fraud.
She said that Google’s AI-powered defenses block approximately 99% of scam messages sent to users via Gmail.
She also revealed that the platform has launched an enhanced fraud protection pilot program across 185 markets, which has blocked about 266 million risky installation tests.
Finally, Filip Verbeke, co-Founder and CCO at Reform, warned that the fraud epidemic is still ramping up.
He predicted an “avalanche of fraud cases” over the next 18 months. He said this would be accelerated by advances in AI, which allow scammers to automate and better target fraud schemes on an industrial scale.
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