On July 30, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed a contempt order against three Chinese banks that failed to comply with subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).[1] On April 30, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit unsealed an opinion issued on March 18, 2019, by Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell enforcing grand jury subpoenas and an administrative subpoena against three Chinese banks for records of transactions for a now-defunct Hong Kong-based front company for North Korea’s state-operated company.[2] While the banks involved are not named in court papers, they were previously reported to be the Bank of Communications, China Merchants Bank, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPD).

In July 2019, a comprehensive report CIA Torture Unredacted was released.[1] It addresses an investigation into the CIA torture program and presents the combined findings from a four-year joint investigation by The Rendition Project and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It is, without doubt, the most detailed account of the CIA torture program ever published. The Rendition Project is a collaborative research initiative run by Professor Ruth Blakeley at the University of Sheffield and Dr. Sam Raphael at the University of Westminster. The Rendition Project is at the forefront of efforts to investigate and understand the use of rendition, secret detention and torture by the CIA and its allies in the “War on Terror”.[2]

On July 31, 2019, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed to a resolution with LLB Verwaltung (Switzerland) AG, formerly known as “Liechtensteinische Landesbank (Schweiz) AG (LLB-Switzerland), a Swiss-based private bank. LLB-Switzerland agreed to pay a penalty of $10,680,554.64 to the U.S. and cooperate in any related criminal or civil proceedings in return for DOJ’s agreement not to prosecute the company for tax-related criminal offenses committed by LLB-Switzerland.[1]

On August 5, 2019, prosecutors unsealed an indictment of Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old Pakistan national, who Hong Kong extradited to the United States.  A federal grand jury indictment in Seattle, Washington charges him with paying insiders at AT&T to plant malware and otherwise misuse computer networks to unlock cellphones in a 14-count federal indictment also unsealed on August 5.[1]

On July 19, 2019, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 2482 (2019), which addresses the relationship between organized crime and counter-terrorism. This is a topic that has been debated regularly in the UNSC since the first resolution, Resolution 1373 (2001), a month after 9/11, that recognized a “close connection between international terrorism and transnational organized crime, illicit drugs, money-laundering, illegal arms-trafficking, and illegal movement of nuclear, chemical, biological and other potentially deadly materials.” This resolution called for national, regional, and international cooperation to combat terrorism financing and money laundering.

On July 16, 2019, Guatemala and the United States signed an agreement that would designate Guatemala as a safe third country for individuals seeking asylum in the United States despite issues in Guatemala about its legality and ability of Guatemala to implement.[1] The White House still has not released the details of the agreement.  President Trump announced the agreement in an unscheduled appearance in the Oval Office with Enrique Degenhart, the Guatemalan minister of government and the acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan.[2]

On August 6, 2019, the Swiss branch of HSBC agreed to pay €294.4 million (US$330 million) to end a Belgian criminal investigation into tax fraud, money laundering, and provisions of illegal financial services by assisting Belgian taxpayers to move money from Swiss accounts to holding companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.[1]  On August 7, 2019, the former HSBC head of private banking in Switzerland pleaded guilty to assisting clients’ hide assets worth at least $1.8 billion.

On August 6, 2019, United States District Judge Amy Berman of the District of Columbia dismissed one of two felony counts against Gregory Craig. In her 57-page memorandum opinion,[2] she found that an October 11, 2013 letter Craig sent to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit was not part of any formal FARA filing. Hence, the prosecution could not charge him for making false submissions. Judge Jackson rejected Craig’s defense that pursuant to jurisprudence in United States v. Safavian, 528 F.3d 957 (D.C. Cir. 2008) that he was not under a legal duty to disclose and therefore there was no concealment offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(1).

The Deskbook, initially published in 2014, is designed to provide an introduction to the complex and dynamic law of money laundering, structuring, and forfeiture for lawyers whose practice does not primarily involve criminal prosecution or defense, and to help executives and managers of companies understand, identify, and avoid potential risks both inside and outside their organizations. The focus is on U.S. federal law.  As the author notes, individual states and foreign jurisdictions have their own anti-money laundering regimes.  The author is now in private practice. Previously she served as a prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, in the Fraud Section, Criminal Division.

On July 31, 2019, the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles unsealed a federal grand jury indictment[1], alleging a complex financial fraud scheme in which a Chinese company exported large amounts of aluminum disguised as “pallets” to the United States to avoid customs duties of up to 400 percent and “sold” the purported pallets to related entities to fraudulently inflate the company’s revenues and deceive investors worldwide.[2] According to the indictment, which was returned on May 7, 2019, China Zhongwang Holdings Limited, Asia’s largest aluminum extrusion company; Zhongtian Liu, the company’s former president and chairman; and several individual and corporate co-defendants lied to U.S. Customs and Border Protection to avoid paying the United States $1.8 billion in anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD), that were imposed in 2011 on certain types of extruded aluminum imported into the United States and China.