HKFP reports
Crime in Hong Kong rises by 34.6% in first 8 months of 2023, security chief says, led by over 50% spike in fraud
A 52.2 per cent spike in fraud related crime has driven the rise in overall crime, Secretary for Security Chris Tang said, with phone fraud rising by 73.6 per cent year-on-year.
Hong Kong recorded 58,453 crime cases in the first eight months of this year, a 34.6 per cent increase compared with the same period last year. Violent crime also rose by 14 per cent to 6,495 cases, the city’s security minister has said.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang attributed the rise in overall crime to a 52.2 per cent year-on-year spike in fraud-related crime, adding that society’s return to normalcy after the Covid-19 pandemic was another factor behind the rise.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with the Fight Crime Committee on Wednesday morning, Tang said that fraud-related crime accounted for 43.7 per cent of overall crime this year so far, while the number was 14.7 per cent in the same period in 2018. “It is a shocking increase,” Tang said in Cantonese.
Fraud-related crime included e-commerce and phone scams, as well as deceptions in investment and job searches, Tang said.
According to police data, fraud-related crime in Hong Kong has risen since the Covid-19 pandemic begun in 2020. In the first half of this year, there were 18,743 cases reported to the police, higher than the whole-year figure in 2020 and close to that in 2021. In 2022, there were 27,923 cases, a record high.
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