On September 24, 2020, the Task Force convened by the think tank of the Antiquities Coalition published its first joint report, Reframing U.S. Policy on the Art Market: Recommendations for Combating Financial Crimes. The report proposes 44 recommendations related to money laundering, sanctions violations, tax evasion, and terrorist financing. The recommendations also address other financial crimes specific to the art market such as forgery and fraud.

On October 5, 2020, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging John David McAfee with tax evasion and willful failure to file tax returns.[1] The DOJ unsealed the June 15, 2020 indictment in the Western District of Tennessee after Spain arrested McAfee.[2]  Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged McAfee for promoting investments in initial coin offerings (ICOs) to his Twitter followers without disclosing that he was paid to do so. The SEC also charged McAfee’s bodyguard, Jimmy Watson, Jr., for his role in the alleged scheme.[3]

On September 30, 2020, the Pakistan government issued a set of three anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) regulations. The regulations are supplementary to its policies to comply with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.

Allegations by the American Administration of intellectual property theft emanating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are not new. In June 2018, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy issued a report entitled “How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World.”[1] In the 35-page Report, the Administration accuses the Chinese government itself of engaging in “two major strategies and various acts and practices . . .seeking to acquire the intellectual property and technologies of the world and to capture emerging high-technology industries that will drive future economic growth.”[2] Of course, many countries, including the United States, would like to dominate future intellectual property and technology development and growth as a means of securing economic prosperity. China is different from other countries, according to the Report, because of its systematic use of criminal activity authorized at the highest levels of the government and the Communist Party of the PRC.

            Spain’s National Court convicted Ex-El Salvador military leader, Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, to 133 years in prison for the murder of five Spanish Jesuit priests. Justice was carried out nine years after Mr. Montano was first taken into custody in the U.S. for immigration fraud charges and subsequently extradited to Spain in 2017. The decision vindicated Spain’s universal jurisdiction law and may ultimately lead to reconciliation for the people of El Salvador.

                On September 22, 2020, a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York indicted a trader at the U.S. subsidiary of a multinational oil distributor and trading company (Trading Company) for his alleged participation in a five-year international bribery and money laundering scheme involving corrupt payments to Ecuadorian officials.[1]

                On September 23, 2020, the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) issued a report, calling for more robust exchange of information on request to counter the increasing amount of alleged large-scale tax fraud schemes known as “Cum/Ex.”  ESMA’s report responded to the Resolution 2018/2900 (RSP) adopted on November 29, 2018 by the European Parliament, requesting ESMA to perform a study into dividend arbitrage, Cum/Ex and Cum/Cum schemes.[1]

On September 22, 2020, the British government shared evidence with the United States Department of Justice to prosecute the ISIS ‘Beatles’ after the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice ruled that the mother of El Shafee Elsheikh, one of the defendants, has no more grounds to block the transfer of criminal evidence to U.S. prosecutors.[1]

The Republic of South Sudan is the newest sovereign state in the world. It was created in record time in the summer of 2011 and it was also in record time that it was admitted to membership in the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU). Unfortunately, soon after gaining independence, South Soudan met the fate that so many other African states have experienced upon gaining independence, namely hostilities between government forces and opposition forces, coups d’état, and ethnic tensions (unavoidable in Africa) leading to civil wars with an enormous human toll. Given that the civil war in South Soudan lasted from December 2013 until February 2020, the history of this country has been intricately linked to the perpetration of atrocious crimes on a large scale, including the alleged used of starvation as a tactic for collective punishment of population groups, sexual violence, the use of children as soldiers, etc. While in the past impunity of those accused of committing atrocities was the order of the day, in more recent times Africa has made strides in ensuring that alleged perpetrators will be brought to trial and, if found guilty, punished. This brief article will examine the establishment of a court of justice with criminal jurisdiction to determine culpability in the South Sudanese Civil War. This judicial institution, if and when it becomes operative, will be the Hybrid Court for South Sudan.

On September 21, 2020, the Jerusalem District Court ruled Malka Leifer, a former educator who is accused of sexually abusing several former students, can be extradited to Australia on charges of child sex abuse. Leifer has fought extradition from Israel since 2014. The length of the extradition proceedings have strained relations between Israel and Australia.[1]