On February 18, 2020, a former U.S. resident and taxpayer who was charged along with three other individuals in connection with a decades-long criminal scheme perpetrated by Mossack Fonseca & Co. (Mossack Fonseca), a Panamanian-based global law firm, and its related entities, pleaded guilty to wire and tax fraud, money laundering, false statements, and other charges.[1]

On February 18, 2020, the European Council adopted revised conclusions on the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.  Besides the eight jurisdictions on the list, the EU also decided to add the following jurisdictions:  Cayman Islands, Palau, Panama, and Seychelles.[1]

On January 23, 2020, the United States State Department rejected a request from the British Home Office to extradite Anne Sacoolas, who fled the United Kingdom under the protection of diplomatic immunity shortly after a road accident that killed British citizen Harry Dunn.  The incident has confused interpretations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) and called into question certain bilateral agreements between the US and UK regarding diplomatic immunity.

On February 6, 2020, the United States Department of Treasury issued the 2020 National Strategy for Combating Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing (2020 Strategy), which provides a roadmap to modernize the U.S. anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime to make it more effective and efficient. The 2020 Strategy identifies key threats, vulnerabilities, and priorities for disrupting and preventing illicit finance activities within and transiting the U.S. financial system.  It updates the 2018 National Strategy for Combating Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing, pursuant to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA).

On February 5, 2020, the England and Wales Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by the wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker to discharge the unexplained wealth order (UWO) against her property in central London made by the national Crime Agency (Hajiyeva v NCA, 2020 EWCA Civ 108).[1]

On January 28, 2020, a report[1] was released alleging that a New York Times journalist, Ben Hubbard, was sent spyware in 2018 that was embedded in a text message on his cellphone.  This malware is purported to be linked to Saudi Arabia, making this the first American journalist to have been targeted.[2]

On February 10, 2020, United States Attorney General William P. Barr announced the indictment[1] of four Chinese military hackers for breaking into the computer systems of the credit-reporting agency Equifax, and for stealing the sensitive personal information of nearly half of all United States citizens, and also Equifax’s intellectual property.[2]

On February 7, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a per curiam ruling decided the 215 Members of Congress did not have standing to sue President Donald Trump over alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause (Clause).[1]  The opinion reverses the district court’s decision, denying President Trump’s motion to dismiss.

On February 6, 2020, Brazil extradited Carlos García Juliá, wanted for participating in the 1977 Atocha massacre in Madrid, to Spain.  On his arrival, he was sent to the Soto del Real prison to complete his jail sentence for the five murders and four attempted homicides committed in an office of labor lawyers.[1] At the time of the assassinations García Juliá  was a member of the right-wing New Force.  In 1980, Spain convicted him for being one of the perpetrators of the massacre of three labor attorneys, a law student, and a staff member in the labor lawyers’ office of Comisiones Obreras.[2]

On November 11, 2019, Gambia instituted proceedings against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming the maltreatment of the Rohingya community constituted genocidal acts in breach of the Genocide Convention, to which both States are parties.[1] The case focuses on the ill-treatment of the Rohingya ethnic and Muslim minority, mainly in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, by the Myanmar military and local militia, which has been described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing.’[2]