On August 29, 2023, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a multinational operation with law enforcement actions in the U.S., France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Latvia to disrupt the botnet and malware known as Qakbot and take down its infrastructure.  The law enforcement operations are deleting the Qakbot malicious code from victim computers, preventing it from causing more harm.  The DOJ also announced the seizure of approximately $8.6 million in cryptocurrency in illicit profits.

 On July 10th, the Illinois State Museum repatriated 37 wooden memorial statues, known as Vigango, to Kenya. In 2018 the museum became aware that the statues were obtained through forceful, unethical, and illegal means.

On June 8, 2023, Singapore deported Shahul Hammed to India.  When his plane reached Madurai, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him on suspicion of arranging funds legally and illegally from Singapore and other countries.

On August 25, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges against 3M Company for violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) with regard to activities by its Chinese subsidiary.

In June 2023, the Netherlands and Belgium joined Sweden and France on a joint investigation team (JIT) working to identify suspects and victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by the Islamic State against the Yazidi people in Syria and Iraq. The EU-based JIT, founded in 2022 between Sweden and France, seeks to investigate foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) residing in the EU. 

On July 18, 2023, the Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions held a hearing entitled “Potential Consequences of FinCEN’s Beneficial Ownership Rulemaking”.    The testimony unanimously underscored serious gaps in the rulemaking for the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA).  The Beneficial Ownership Information reporting element of the CTA is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2024.

On July 5, 2023, United States District Court Judge John G. Koeltl issued an opinion and order, denying defendants’ motion to dismiss the civil action brought by the Belgian Government (Federal Public Service Finance – FPSF) against several purported pension plans and individuals associated with them. The case involves the cum ex-dividend schemes. The opinion adopted much of the reasoning of the opinion of Judge Lewis Kaplan, who denied the motion to dismiss by defendants in a cum-ex dividend case involving the Danish Government.

On August 8, 2023, the United States Department of Justice announced indictment charges against a convicted felon and Barbados resident who allegedly posed as an experienced Wall Street stock trader with operating a securities scam that defrauded victim investors of approximately $3.1 million.

INTERPOL and AFRIPOL successfully coordinated a four-month Africa Cyber Surge II operation across 25 African countries, resulting in the arrest of 14 suspected cybercriminals and the identification of 20,674 suspicious cyber networks.  The operation underscores the surge in digital insecurity and cyber threats in the region and illustrated the cooperation by INTERPOL’s Cybercrime Directorate, under the auspices of the INTERPOL Africa Cybercrime Operations desk and INTERPOL’s Support Program for the African Union in relation to AFRIPOL (ISPA).   The operation identified networks connected to financial losses of more than USD 40 million.

On August 10, 2023, the United States and Colombian Governments did the first joint resolution of a criminal case as Corporación Financiera Colombiana S.A. (Corficolombiana), a Colombian financial services institution,[1] has agreed to pay $80 million to resolve parallel bribery investigations by criminal, civil, and administrative authorities in the United States and Colombia arising from the company’s participation in a scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to high-ranking government officials in Colombia.[2]