On September 17, 2021, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker, ruled that Moses Thomas, who had lived in Philadelphia since emigrating from Liberia in 2000, is liable under the Victim and Torture Protection Act (VTPA)[1] and the Alien Tort Statute[2] for the slaughter in 1990 of more than 600 civilians at a Lutheran church in Monrovia, Liberia.[3]

On September 21, 2021, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the first virtual currency exchange for laundering cyber ransoms and updated its ransomware advisory to encourage reporting of incident and ransomware payment to both Treasury and law enforcement.

The 10th Public Edition of the Basel AML Index was released on September 13, 2021. The Basel AML Index is an independent assessment and ranking of money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks around the world, published by the Basel Institute on Governance since 2012 through its International Centre for Asset Recovery. The accompanying report questions whether jurisdictions are serious about tackling their ML/TF risks, given this year’s slight increase in the average global ML/TF risk score from 5.22 to 5.30 out of 10. It also highlights four specific areas of concern, relating to: virtual assets, beneficial ownership transparency, designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs), and preventive measures.

On September 8, 2021, Cape Verde’s Constitutional Court, the island nation’s highest judicial authority, approved the extradition to the U.S. of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, a Venezuelan emissary detained last year while refueling his private jet en route to Iran.^[1]  The decision to extradite Saab accompanies rising tensions between the U.S. and Maduro’s Venezuelan government and comes after a legal battle over the validity of Saab’s detainment and potential extradition. 

On September 8, 2021, United States law enforcement officials announced the unsealing in the Southern District of New York of an indictment, charging a former employee of the Swedish multinational telecommunications company Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (“Ericsson”) for his alleged role in a scheme to pay approximately $2.1 million in bribes to high-level government officials in the Republic of Djibouti and conspiring to launder funds.[1]

                On September 8-9, 2021, the G7 and EU Security Ministers, along with the Secretary General of INTERPOL, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, met remotely to discuss responding to the rapidly evolving events in Afghanistan, as well as countering racially and ethnically motivated extremism.[1]

In late August 2021, the Gambian government announced that any migrants wanting to return home to The Gambia would not be allowed to enter. The Banjul administration said it would not allow any flights carrying Gambian migrants coming from the EU. [1]

In August and September, the United States has prosecuted three cases for wildlife trafficking.  On August 11, 2021, the U.S. Court in Anchorage, Alaska, sentenced an Anchorage man to six months home confinement and more than $400,000 in fines and restitution for illegally trafficking in walrus ivory and failure to report business income to the IRS.[1]  On August 31, 2021, the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced a Virginia man for selling elephant and whale ivory online in violation of the Endangered Species Act.[2]  On September 3, a U.S. District Court sentenced a Mexican national to three years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release for his role in a conspiracy to smuggle protected reptiles from Mexico to the United States.[3]

On September 10, 2021, United States law enforcement announced that the Spanish police arrested the day before former Venezuelan official Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, a/k/a “El Pollo” in Madrid, Spain.  His arrest responded to the U.S. extradition request pursuant to an indictment charging Carvajal Barrios with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy and a conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S., including a 5.6-ton shipment of cocaine sent from Venezuela to Mexico in April 2006, along with related firearm offenses.  Spanish authorities initially arrested Carvajal Barrios in April 2019.  Later that year, the Spanish National Court approved Carvajal Barrios’s extradition to the U.S.  Thereafter, Carvajal Barrios became a fugitive.[1]

On September 7, 2021, the French Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) overturned the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal, dismissing a charge of complicity in crimes against humanity against Lafarge, now part of Switzerland-listed Holcim.  After an internal investigation, Lafarge admitted that its Syrian subsidiary paid armed groups to protect its workers at its Syrian plant.