Fraud has become one of the most urgent challenges affecting businesses, consumers, and institutions worldwide. As scams grow more sophisticated and increasingly interconnected with widescale organised crime, effective responses now depend on stronger cooperation between governments, financial institutions, technology providers, and responsible private organisations.
Addressing QNET fraud concerns has been a top priority for the company, and we are dedicated to taking steps beyond simply responding to misinformation. And so, against this backdrop, QNET participated in the Global Fraud Summit on 16-17 March in Vienna, Austria.
What is the Global Fraud Summit?
The Global Fraud Summit is a high-level international forum focussed on strengthening cooperation against fraud, scams, and financial crime across borders. Organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and INTERPOL, it brought together around 1,300 participants from law enforcement, intergovernmental organisations, the private sector, civil society, and academia to turn anti-fraud commitments into coordinated action.
Why Fraud Prevention Requires Broader Cooperation
Fraud rarely exists in isolation. Scams are increasingly overlapping with wider forms of organised criminal activity, including digital deception, identity misuse, financial exploitation, and false recruitment schemes that target vulnerable individuals.
Criminals often exploit trusted names and recognised brands to create false credibility, confusing consumers and harming legitimate businesses in the process. For companies operating in multiple markets, like QNET, it can become difficult to keep up with the spread of negativity that results from the fraudulent representation. Internal controls and public statements can only do so much when the problem persists beyond borders. This is where coordinated action with governing bodies and the public sector becomes crucial.
QNET Fraud Prevention: Public-Private Partnerships That Deliver Practical Results
At the summit, QNET participated in the event Building Public-Private Solutions to Fraud & Trafficking, where they explored a real-world case study on how criminal networks misuse legitimate online platforms to deceive and exploit victims, and how public-private partnerships can disrupt these crimes.
The panel featured QNET’s Chief Communication Officer Ramya Chandrasekaran, Executive Director of Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) Raymond Archer, and Abdus Salam, a human trafficking survivor who now works as a lived-experience advisor in the global anti-trafficking space. The panel was moderated by Ilhas Chatsiz, Head of the Organised Crime Division at UNODC.
The discussion highlighted how QNET and EOCO built a working partnership after both sides recognised that criminal groups in Ghana were exploiting the company’s name to run recruitment fraud and trafficking-linked scams that were affecting innocent Ghanaians. Through this cooperation, they were able to raise public awareness and strengthen investigations that brought real criminals to justice.
The panel also shed light on how these scams operate, including cases in parts of Asia where victims are lured by fake job offers and forced to run online scams using fraudulent social media identities and manipulated conversations to gain trust and extract money or personal information.
Such chilling accounts illustrate the problem’s complexity and scale and further emphasise how the response to fraud and trafficking requires governments, businesses and communities to closely work together.
Anti-Scam Action Beyond Global Forums
With QNET’s participation at the Global Fraud Summit, the company has officially been listed on the UNODC website as an endorser of the Global Public-Private Partnership Framework Against Fraud, alongside more than a hundred other entities, from governments to various public, private, and civic organisations.
This builds on QNET’s ongoing anti-fraud efforts across multiple regions. At present, QNET provides practical guidance to help the public recognise common fraud tactics, verify official communication channels, and report misuse of the company’s name, through our anti-scam awareness platform, which is available in multiple languages across our official regional and local public sites.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, these efforts have expanded through the QNET Against Scams campaign, a regional awareness initiative focussed on addressing deceptive recruitment tactics affecting vulnerable communities. Its distribution spans radio, television, digital spaces, and billboard placements, to make prevention information visible in everyday settings.
Supporting a Healthier Direct Selling Ecosystem
Direct selling is a global industry built on trust, operating through personal networks and connecting millions through independent distribution channels. The industry’s success relies on transparency and responsible conduct at every level, so when negative news affects one company, it can influence public perception of the wider sector across markets.
Therefore, companies, regulators, industry associations, and consumer protection bodies must share the responsibility to promote a healthier ecosystem with strong compliance standards, clear communication, and continuous education to help distinguish legitimate direct selling from deceptive schemes.
QNET’s participation in the Global Fraud Summit reflects our broader commitment to fostering a healthier business environment for the direct selling industry and the communities where we operate.
