On December 23, 2019, a court in Luanda, Angola ordered an asset freeze of the personal bank accounts of Isabel dos Santos, her husband, Sindika Dokolo, and Mario da Silva in Angola, and the stakes they have in nine Angolan firms as a result of the alleged losses they caused to the Angolan government of over $1 billion.[1]  Dos Santos is the wealthiest woman in Africa and is the daughter of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos.

On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA) into law. Title 75 of the NDAA contains the “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act of 2019,” (“PEESA” or the “Act”) which authorizes the President to impose sanctions on foreign persons who knowingly sell, lease, or provide vessels for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 or TurkStream pipeline projects, or any successor to either project. The policies advanced by PEESA are consistent with prior U.S. policy and legislation, particularly the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of August 2017. This MassPoint publication discusses PEESA’s policies, sanctions mechanics, the relationship between PEESA and CAATSA, and key takeaways.

On December 18, 2019, a United Kingdom national, Nathan Wyatt, 39, appeared in United States District Court in St. Louis on charges of aggravated identity theft, threatening to damage a protected computer, and conspiring to commit those and other computer fraud offenses, related to his role in a computer hacking collective known as “The Dark Overlord.”  The latter organization targeted victims in the St. Louis, Missouri area starting in 2016.[1]

The book gives a critical look at international efforts to regulate the gold supply chain, including soft law and self-regulation.  The book shows the international community has not yet achieved credible protection of essential human rights.  The author is a well-known professor at the University of Basel who has spent the last 25 years working in the field of international regulation to combat corruption, money laundering, and organized crime.

On December 18, 2019, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. settled criminal charges concerning the work it did in Libya with its construction division, pleading guilty to one count of fraud and ending a long-standing scandal that harmed its reputation and involved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet.[1] The plea agreement required the construction division to plead guilty to a charge of fraud over $5,000 and pay a $280 million penalty over a five-year period.  The division is also subject to a three-year probation order.

On December 16, 2019, the Dutch police announced that Dubai police have arrested the suspected head of a cocaine trafficking gang and the most wanted man in the Netherlands.   Dubai police arrested Ridouan Taghi, 41, on international arrest warrants for murder and drug trafficking.[1] Taghi was born in Morocco.  He is suspected of ordering the murder of Derk Wiersam, 44 and Dutch lawyer of a state witness in a case against him.  Taghi, a father of two young children, was shot dead as he said goodbye to his wife outside his home in suburban Amsterdam.[2]

 The Council of Europe’s (CoE) European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) held its seventy-seventh plenary session on December 3 and 4, 2019, in Strasbourg, France.[1] At the opening of the meeting, Jan Kleijssen, Director of Information Society for the Council of Europe’s Action against Crime Committee highlighted the important work the Ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI) undertook as the Committee of Ministers mandated to examine the feasibility of a legal framework for the development, design, and use of artificial intelligence, based on the organization’s fundamental values, including a multi-stakeholder consultation.

On December 15, 2019, France extradited a former Argentinian police officer, who worked for many years as an academic at the Sorbonne, to Argentina to answer changes of his participation in the disappearance of a student who went missing during the “dirty war” in the late 1970s.[1] Argentine prosecutors accuse Mario Sandoval, 66, of participating in the death of an architecture student, Hernán Abriata, who disappeared in 1976 at the infamous navy mechanics school (Esma), in Buenos Aires, a notorious secret detention center where an estimated 5,000 people were held and tortured after the military coup of 1976.[2]

On November 13, 2019, the Sixth Committee (Legal) of the UN General Assembly engaged in discussions concerning elaboration and adopted a new convention on crimes against humanity at its seventy-fourth session.[1] The Committee considered Chapter IV of the 2019 report of the International Law Commission (ILC) on the work of its seventy-first session,^[2] which contains the draft articles on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.[3] The Committee noted that the Commission had decided to recommend the draft articles on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity to the General Assembly and recommended the elaboration of a convention by the Assembly or by an international conference of plenipotentiaries on the basis of the draft articles.

On December 2, 2019, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) once again declined – now for a third time – to open an investigation into Israel’s violent attack on the MV Mavi Marmara.[1] The Prosecutor described this decision, which was filed with Pre-Trial Chamber I on November 29, 2017, as “final” and revised and refiled in accordance with the Pre-Trial Chamber’s request of November 15, 2018 and the Appeals Chamber’s judgment of September 2, 2019.[2]