On January 23, 2020, Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russians in absentia for the attempted murder of a weapons manufacturer, his son, and the production manager of the company.[1] According to Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office (SGP), the three suspects tried to poison the victims internationally ‘by intoxication with an unidentified phosphorus-organic substance.”[2] The three suspects clandestinely entered Bulgaria using fake passports and used an organophosphate poison in an effort “to deliberately kill” the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, the owner of EMCO Ltd., his son Hristo Gebrev, and manager Valentin Takhchiev between April 28 and May 4, 2015.[3]

On January 23, 2020, Armengol Alfosno Cevallos Diaz (Cevallos), an Ecuadorian businessman living in Miami, Florida, pleaded guilty in connection with a $4.4 million bribery and money laundering scheme that transferred bribes to public officials of Empresa Pública de Hidrocarburos del Ecuador (PetroEcuador), the state-owned and state-controlled oil company of Ecuador.[1]

On January 15, 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and Human Rights First brought  a  lawsuit in U.S. District Court[1] challenging the Trump administration’s policies concerning Asylum Cooperation Agreement (also known as “safe third country” agreements) with Guatemala and other Northern Triangle countries that force individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. to apply for asylum in the same dangerous region from which they have fled.

On December 9, 2019, Genaro Garcia Luna, former Secretary of Public Security under President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012, was arrested in Dallas, Texas. His indictment, released the next day, revealed that he was facing “three counts of cocaine trafficking and one count of making false statements.”[1] Given that he was arrested in Texas, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will seek to conduct the trial in the court of the Eastern District of New York.[2]

On January 23, 2020, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) announced its first coordinated set of enforcement actions undertaken on a global scale on the preceding day. The operation results from a series of investigations in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

On January 17, 2020, Samherji’s acting chief executive Björgólfur Jóhannsson issued a statement, confirming his company’s withdrawal from its businesses in Namibia, including a N$400 million[1] vessel it purchased with Namibians, using state-allocated fishing quotas.[2]

 On January 16, 2020, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn found a former Minister of Industry and member of the Barbados Parliament guilty for his role in a scheme to launder bribes paid to him by executives of the Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL).[1]

On December 19, 2019, a major mafia crackdown involving more than 3,000 Italian police officers resulted in 334 arrests across Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland, and 12 provinces in Italy. Out of the 334 arrests, 260 suspects were jailed and 70 were placed under house arrest. In addition to the arrests, authorities seized or froze property with a value of approximately $16.7 million.[1]

 As the ratifications of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) continue, professionals are focusing on the enforcement cooperation improvements in intellectual property and environmental law.  On January 16, 2020, the U.S. Senate approved the agreement by a vote of 89 to 10.  The month before, the House approved the agreement by a similarly wide margin, after months of negotiations between Democrats and the White House, which produced pro-labor revisions and jettisoned drug-exclusivity provisions the pharmaceutical industry sought.[1]

In a historic step on December 11, 2019, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) along with its partner organizations – Mwatana for Human Rights from Yemen, the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) based in the United Kingdom, Centre d’Estudis per la Pau J.M. Delàs (Centre Delàs) from Spain, and Osservatorio Permanente sulle Armi Leggere e le Politiche di Sicurezza e Difesa (O.P.A.L.) – submitted a communication (“the Communication”) to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the situation in Yemen.[1]