In June 2015, the International Criminal Court (ICC) demanded that the government of the Republic of South Africa arrest Omar Al-Bashir,[1] the now-deposed President of the Sudan, who at the time was attending a session of the African Union (“AU”) Assembly in Johannesburg. Even though domestic courts ordered the government to do so,[2] a ruling subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal,[3]Al-Bashir was not arrested but was allowed to leave the country. In September 2015, ICC re-Trial Chamber II held that these events warranted the opening of proceedings against South Africa, one of ICC’s original members and, for a long-time, a staunch supporter.  On October 19, 2016, South Africa notified the UN Secretary-General that it would withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty established the ICC,[4] a move that the ICC proceedings against it arguably caused, among other reasons.

In November 2019, Thai authorities extradited a Swedish citizen to the United States on charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.[1] On July 25, 2019, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California returned an indictment against Roger Nils-Jonas Karlsson, 45, and his company, Eastern Metal Securities (EMS), charging the defendants with engaging in a scheme to defraud victims of more than $11 million.  On June 17, 2019, Thai authorities arrested Karlsson.

On November 22, 2019, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Samsung Heavy Industries Company Ltd. (“Samsung”), a South Korea-based engineering company that provides shipbuilding, offshore platform construction, and other construction and engineering services, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). In the agreement, Samsung agreed to pay total penalties of more than $75 million to resolve the U.S. government’s investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) arising out of a scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes in Brazil.[1]

On October 28, 2019, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia granted judicial review of a May 18, 2018 order to surrender, authorizing extradition of a Canadian national to the United States to face prosecution for money laundering offenses.   In Sheck v. Canada,^[1] the Court returned the case to the Minister of Justice for reconsideration.  Sheck had previously been unsuccessful in obtaining a stay of extradition.

On November 8, 2019, the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) brought together investigators, cryptocurrency experts, and data scientists to identify individuals who are the most egregious tax offenders in the world.[1]  This article discusses the J5 meeting, as well as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiatives to investigate and prevent cryptocurrency crimes.

On November 13, 2019 Anguilla’s Attorney General Dwight Horsford said an international arrest warrant will be issued for 44-year-old Scott Hapgood who refused to return to Anguilla to face the court on a manslaughter charge in the killing of a hotel worker.[1] Hapgood is charged with killing a 27-year-old employee of the luxury Malliouhana Hotel, Kenny Mitchel, during a confrontation while Hapgood, his wife and two children vacationed in Anguilla in  April of this year.[2]

Human trafficking and labor servitude are occurring globally in the rapidly expanding marijuana cultivation “industry” in which the murky status between legal and illegal product entering the consumer supply chain allows transborder criminal organizations to capitalize on gaps in law enforcement and immigration laws.  Over the last several years, grow operations concealed in non-descript settings—suburban houses and warehouses in industrial areas—have been found throughout Great Britain, Ireland, and Western Europe.  With those discoveries, authorities have found numerous instances of undocumented immigrants, including children, toiling over the valuable crops while subjected to potentially fatal health risks from constant exposure to chemicals in poorly-ventilated rooms, malnutrition, constant illness, and the looming threat of fires and electrocution.

On November 14, 2019, two Chinese nationals and former executives of the Chinese subsidiary of Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (HLF.N) (“Herbalife”) were charged with paying bribes, circumventing internal accounting controls of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other offenses.

On October 21, 2019, during a case management hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied Mark Summers’ request, counsel for Julian Assange, to delay the extradition proceedings three months.  The next case management hearing will occur on December 19. The full extradition hearing will start February 25, 2020.

On November 12, 2019, The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Antigua and Barbuda extradited to the United States the former chief of its Financial Services Regulatory Commission to face charges for his alleged role in connection with the Stanford International Bank (SIB) $7 billion investment fraud scheme.