The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) recently cracked down on global financial fraud with the conclusion of Operation First Light 2026 (15 January - 30 April ), which focused on combatting social engineering scams and associated money laundering techniques.^[2]  Social engineering refers to techniques that exploit a person’s trust to obtain money or information.^[3]  These techniques include but are not limited to email compromise, sextortion, and romance, impersonation or investment scams.^[4]

                On July 13, 2026, the Council of the European Union Announced sanctions on nine Russian individuals and four entities responsible for and involved in carrying out, enabling and facilitating cyber-attacks against the EU, its member states and international partners.  For the first time, the EU and the United Kingdom have adopted sanctions simultaneously under their respective cyber sanctions’ regimes. The Council is imposing sanctions on the Bullet Proof Hosting service provider Media Land LLC and his owner Alexander Volosovik.  Media Land LLC is sanctioned because it has facilitated a wide variety of malware attacks against both EU member states and worldwide, thereby causing significant financial losses.  It enabled cyber criminals to engage in malicious cyber activities, including large-scale ransomware and phishing operations, targeting critical infrastructure and essential services among EU members.  The Council also designated ML.Cloud, the sister company of Media Land LLC.

                The Fifty-First Regular meeting of the Conference of the Heads of Government (HoG) of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), held in St. Lucia on July 8-9, produced many international enforcement initiatives, including on receipt of Third Country Nationals, endorsement of ten-point reparations manifesto for the racialized chattel enslavement of Africans, support for the security situation against transnational organized crime in Haiti, security problems on the borders between Guyana-Venezuela, Belize-Honduras-Guatemala, and the situation in Gaza.  In addition on July 10, the U.S. State Department announced the biometrics and data sharing partnership memorandum of cooperation between the United States (U.S.) and CARICOM IMPACS.

                On June 17, 2026, INTERPOL released its 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment Report, a look at the increases and shifts in cyberthreats for the period of January 2024-March 2025.  The report drew on surveys from 18 INTERPOL member countries in Asia and the South Pacific, including both public and private sector reports, and demonstrated that rates of cybercrimes, including ransomware, phishing attacks, and data breaches have risen to an enormous degree throughout Asia and the South Pacific.

                On July 10, 2026, Ghana extradited to the United States a Ghanaian social media influencer against whom an indictment accuses of operating an online scam that defrauded elderly Americans out of more than $8 million through romance frauds conducted on social media. On December 11, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Ohio announced the return of a two-count indictment against Frederick Kumi, aka Emmanuel Kojo Baah Obeng, aka Abu Trica, 31, of Swedru, Ghana.

               On July 10, 2026, South African law enforcement arrested Zimbabwean and British national Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, who departed Britain through Heathrow Airport on July 6.  Nothabo Zandile Tshuma and daughters Nala, five, and Natalie, 15, were found dead at their home in Bedfordshire. A joint operation involving the South African Police Service, Interpol National Central Bureau, Crime Intelligence and the Organized Crime Investigation Unit arrested Mr. Tshuma.

             On June 12, 2026, the World Customs Organization (WCO) hosted the second webinar of 2026 under its theme of “Customs Protecting Society through Vigilance and Commitment.” Participants were made up of “representatives from Customs administrations, international organizations, law enforcement agencies, academia and the private sector.”  This included WCO Deputy Secretary General Ricardo Trevino Chapa, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Secretariat, and members of Hong Kong Customs and the Egmont Group.  The discussions centered around the importance of Customs generally and the WCO playing an active role in combatting money laundering, the need for financial intelligence development, and the necessity of collaboration between Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), Customs/WCO, banks, and tax authorities.

                On June 29, 2026, Swiss authorities returned 18 stolen artifacts stolen to Nigeria in a ceremony at the National Museum in Lagos.  The handover occurred as part of a bilateral cooperation agreement between the two countries, which has the purpose of protecting cultural heritage and redressing historical injustice. The ceremony signaled the first measure to implement the agreement signed in March 2026, in which the Swiss government agreed to transfer ownership of 28 artifacts to Nigeria.  The 18 pieces are part of the country’s Benin Bronzes, which are hundreds of sculptures and plaques mostly made of metal and ivory that adorned the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, now the Southern Nigerian Edo state.  The pieces served political and religious functions. 

               A June 2026 report from the United Nations (UN) claims that the Israeli military continues to deliberately kill children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, despite a late 2025 truce.  The UN alleges that Israeli crimes against Palestinian children in both the West Bank and Gaza meet the threshold for genocide.  The UN supports their controversial accusation by claiming that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) specifically targeted young Palestinian boys, often justifying their actions with the notion that the boys are “future terrorists.”  In one instance, a young child was shot in the head while leaving his home to play outside with his friends.  Similarly, the UN documented an egregious case of IDF soldiers shooting a boy and then gathering around his body as he slowly bled to death.  The soldiers prevented emergency services from arriving on the scene and even fired upon the boy’s mother as she tried to save her dying son.  The Israeli military and the Israeli delegation to the UN strongly deny all accusations of genocide and the systematic killing of children, referring to the UN report and other similar investigative reporting as libel. 

                On July 6, 2026, a court in Vienna, Austria found two former Syrian officials guilty of crimes against humanity committed against victims during the Arab Spring uprising.  The court sentenced Khaled al-Halabi, a former intelligence commander during the Bashar al-Assad regime, and Musab Abu Rukbah, a former police commander, to eight years in prison for crimes perpetrated against detainees during the democracy protests in the city of Raqqa between 2011 and 2013.