The International Enforcement Law Reporter is a monthly print and online journal covering news and trends in international enforcement law.
Since September 1985, the International Enforcement Law Reporter has analyzed the premier developments in both the substantive and procedural aspects of international enforcement law. Read by practitioners, academics, and politicians, the IELR is a valuable guide to the difficult and dynamic field of international law.
On March 23, 2023, Montenegrin authorities arrested Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, who is wanted in both South Korea and the United States after a $40 billion crash of his firm’s cryptocurrency that had adverse consequences throughout the world.[1]
The jury found Jean Morose Viliena, a former Haitian mayor, guilty in the U.S. District Court in Boston on March 21st and ordered him to pay $15.5 million in damages. Viliena was charged under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) of 1991 by three Haitian men who they or their families have been victims of. The following day, Viliena was sent back to court where a grand jury found him guilty on three-counts of visa fraud for allegedly lying about his previous violence charges to get a green card.[1]
[1] Dowling, Brian, Ex-Haitian Mayor Hit With Visa Charge After Torture Verdict, LAW360, March 22, 2023.
On March 28, 2023, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. announced that he would cut off contact with the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it rejected an appeal asking it to stop investigating his predecessor's (Rodrigo Duterte) lethal war on drugs.[1]
* Professor Plachta specializes in criminal law and international criminal law. He has authored numerous publication on a wide range of problems concerning law enforcement and international cooperation in criminal matters. He currently teaches criminal law and European criminal law at the University of Security in Poznan, Poland.
[1] Philippines' Marcos to shut out ICC after losing drugs war appeal, Reuters, March 28, 2023.
On March 21, 2023, U.S. law enforcement officials announced the unsealing of charges against Irina Dilkinska relating to her participation in the massive OneCoin fraud scheme.[1] OneCoin, which started operations in 2014 and was headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, marketed and sold a fraudulent cryptocurrency called OneCoin through a global multi-level-marketing (“MLM”) network. The marketing and misrepresentations tricked victims into investing over $4 billion worldwide in fraudulent cryptocurrency. On March 20, Bulgaria extradited Dilkinska from Bulgaria and she was presented to U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn the following day.[2]
[1] United States v. Irina Dilkinska, U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y., S14 17 Cr. 630 (ER), Sealed Superseding Indictment.
[2] Id. para. 2. U.S. Attorney Office, SDNY, Bulgarian Woman for Role in Multi-Billion-Dollar Cryptocurrency Pyramid Scheme “OneCoin” and Extradited from Bulgaria to the United States, Press Rel. 23-108, Mar. 21, 2023.
On January 31, a Finnish Appeals Court arrived in Liberia to begin a trial against Sierra Leonean rebel commander Gibril Massaquoi. A lower Finish Court acquitted Massaquoi of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but this appeals trial will take place in Liberia because many of the witnesses were unable to travel to Finland.
On March 16, 2023, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the first ever extraditions from Guatemala to the U.S. on charges of human smuggling resulting in death and the first Guatemalan extraditions to the U.S. for human smuggling of any kind in nearly five years.[1]
[1] U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Department Announces Historic Guatemalan Human Smuggling Extraditions at Joint Task Force Alpha Summit, Pres Rel. 23-296, March 16, 2023.
On March 17, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the President of the Russian Federation and Ms. Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, for committing the war crime of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute.
On March 15, 2023, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine released its final report outlining the main findings since the outset of its mandate.[1]
* Professor Plachta specializes in criminal law and international criminal law. He has authored numerous publication on a wide range of problems concerning law enforcement and international cooperation in criminal matters. He currently teaches criminal law and European criminal law at the University of Security in Poznan, Poland.
[1] Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, March 15, 2023, A/HRC/52/62.
On March 15, 2023, the United States Department of Justice, Europol, and the German Federal Criminal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt) cooperated in taking down ChipMixer, a darknet cryptocurrency “mixing” service responsible for laundering more than $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency between 2017 and the present. Among its activities, ChipMixer allegedly engaged in ransomware, the darknet market, fraud, cryptocurrency heists, and other hacking schemes. The operation involved U.S. federal enforcement’s court-authorized seizure of two domains that directed users to the ChipMixer service and one Github account, as well as the German Federal Criminal Police’s seizure of the ChipMixer back-end servers and more than $46 million in cryptocurrency.[1] Europol supported Germany and the U.S. in the law enforcement operations.[2]
[1] U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Department Investigation Leads to Takedown of Darknet Cryptocurrency Mixer that Processed Over $3 Billion of Unlawful Transactions, Press Release 23-289, Mar. 15, 2023.
[2] Europol, One of the darkweb’s largest cryptocurrency launderomats washed out, Press Rel., Mar. 15, 2023.
On February 13, a South African court ordered the seizure of a superyacht and two palatial homes owned by Equatorial Guinea's Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang. The suit which drove the seizure was brought by South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg who was unexpectedly arrested and imprisoned while on a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea in 2013.[1]
[1] Equatorial Guinea Vice-President’s Superyacht and Homes Seized in South Africa, BBC, February 13, 2023.
