On April 19, 2018, Transparency International issued a report titled, G20 Leaders or Laggards? Review G20 promises on ending anonymous companies.

The TI report discusses how the major cross-border “grand corruption” scandals have tarnished the Group of 20 (G20) countries in recent years.  It cites the fact that in 2017 Odebrecht the Brazilian engineering company was assessed a US$2.6 billion fine for bribery after being charged with paying US$788 million in bribes. In the “Russian Laundromat” scandal, exposed in 2017, a group of individuals in G20 member Russia allegedly established 21 shell companies, which then moved and laundered illegal proceeds out of the country, making more than 26,000 payments to 96 different countries including every G20 country aside from Brazil.  Increasingly, anonymous companies hide the identity of the person at the source of the funds either to launder and transfer stolen money, or to operationalize corrupt deals, using companies and offshore accounts to pay bribes or buy influence.

On April 27, 2018, a superseding indictment was announced against four Chinese nationals:  Na Chu, 37; Yeyou Chu, 36; Cuiying Liu, 62; and Keping Zhang, 62.  The charges were announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. Attorney Christopher C. Myers for the District of North Dakota and Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

At its 17^th sitting held on April 26, 2018, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted Resolution 2218 (2018) on fighting organized crime by facilitating the confiscation of illegal assets. The debate and resolution were based on a Report prepared by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

On April 19, 2018, the EU Commissioners welcomed the adoption by the European Parliament of the 5^th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. On April 17, 2108, the European Commission adopted a directive on the rules to facilitate the use of financial and other information for the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of certain criminal offenses.

On April 17, 2018, the European Commission released two proposals concerning e-evidence. Both aim at improving cross-border access to electronic evidence.

On April 20, 2018, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed a 66-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Russian Federation, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), Guccifer 2.0, a Russian oligarch (Aras Iskenerovich Agalarov and his son Emin Araz), WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Donald J. Trump Jr., Paul J. Manafort, Jr., Roger J. Stone, Jr., Jared C. Kushner, George Papadopoulos, and Richard W. Gates, III.

On April 14, 2018, during the VIII Summit of the Americas, the heads of government agreed to the Lima Commitment with respect to "Democratic Governance against Corruption."  During the summit Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra, the summit’s host, urged the region to have a “zero tolerance” policy on corruption.  Vizcarro assumed office only weeks before the summit, replacing Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned before a second impeachment attempt against him for his alleged lies regarding his firm’s receipt of payments from Odebrecht and alleged vote buying.

On March 8, 2018, eleven governments signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that brings many new enforcement cooperation provisions. This article highlights some of the enforcement cooperation provisions of the TPP.

Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean sets forth an overview and introduction to the topic.  As the author mentions, the challenge of transnational organized crime and associated public insecurity has evolved beyond what can be readily solved by repressive measures or actions against the leadership of criminal groups alone. The solution requires addressing a host of interrelated challenges in a coordinated fashion, going beyond attacking criminal organizations and their leaderships, but also strengthening the economic, social, and governmental institutions of the host societies whose weakness and corruption create an environment in which criminality can spread.