On December 22, 2022, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and the Korean National Policy Agency of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) signed a Working Arrangement to support the EU members and the South Korean government in preventing and combating serious crime and terrorism. This article discusses the arrangement in the context of similar Europol arrangements.[1]

John Habeta, a Dutchman of Eritrean descent, was extradited from Kenya to The Netherlands on December 25, 2021 following his capture in an INTERPOL operation for the smuggling of African migrants, mostly Eritreans, into Europe.  The Dutchman’s capture and extradition come after a pursuit lasting for over four years, as INTERPOL has considered Habeta a wanted man since 2017.^[1]  In October 2020, Habeta was labeled a high priority target after multiple countries alerted INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau (NCB) in The Hague with new leads on his activities and whereabouts.^[2]

We at the IELR send you the best wishes for a warm and joyous holiday season.  2021 was momentous for the international enforcement community, and we are grateful to have had you following along with our coverage during our 37^th year of discussing international enforcement developments.

On January 6, 2021, law enforcement officials arrested Pierre Girgis, of Manhattan, for allegedly acting as an agent of the Egyptian government, without registering with the United States Department of Justice, as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[1]

On December 22, 2021, the European Commission unveiled an initiative to stop the abuse of shell entities for improper tax and criminal purposes. 

On January 2, 2021, the Jamaican Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte announced that Mario Antonio Palacios, 43, a former Colombian military official whose extradition Haiti requested for his participation in last year’s assassination of the Haitian President will be deported from Jamaica to Colombia on January 3.   On January 4, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Palacios was arrested based on a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida.

On December 10, 2021, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued sanctions against the Bangladeshi paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).  The sanctions were pursuant to Executive Order 13818 which expanded the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act passed in 2016.

On December 2, 2021, the appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court affirmed the conviction of former reservist police officer Simo Stupar of participating in illegally detaining, beating, and killing Bosniaks in the Vlasenica, Republika Srpska in 1992.

On December 21, 2021, a jury in U.S. District Court in Boston, Massachusetts convicted the former chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department relating to false statements to federal authorities concerning his affiliation with the People’s Republic of China’s Thousand Talents Program and the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in Wuhan China, as well as failing to report income he received from WUT and bank accounts in the PRC.[1]  The prosecution arises out of the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative.[2]