On October 9, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York announced that Zhanna Soldatenkova and Ruslan Almetov, both Russian nationals, were indicted along with Arthur Petrov, a dual Russian and German national, for export control violations, smuggling, wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with their alleged participation in a scheme to procure U.S.-sourced microelectronics subject to U.S. export controls on behalf of a Russia-based supplier of critical electronics components for manufactures furnishing weaponry and other equipment to the Russian military. [1] Petrov had already been charged with a criminal complaint.  He was arrested on August 26, 2023, in Cyprus at the request of the U.S.  Earlier this year, Cyprus extradited him, and he arrived on August 8, 2024.  After his initial appearance, the court ordered him detained without bond.  Soldatenkova and Almetov are at large.[2]

                On October 11, 2024, a resident of Hong Kong pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle 29 Eastern box turtles, a protected species, individually wrapped in socks inside a duffle bag.  When apprehended, the woman was attempting to paddle an inflatable kayak across a lake from Vermont to Canada.[1]

                On October 10, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) imposed a record $1.3 billion penalty against TD Bank, N.A. and TD Bank USA, N.A. (collectively, TD Bank, or the Bank) for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the main anti-money laundering (AML) law that protects the financial system from illicit use.[1]

                  On October 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Court accepted the petition for certiorari filed by Smith & Wesson and six other defendants in the case brought by the Ministry of Foreign Relations for the Government of Mexico.[1]

                 Towards the end of September 2024, Europol welcomed the global law enforcement community to its headquarters in The Hague for the annual European Police Chiefs Convention (EPCC), where key challenges facing modern policing were discussed.

                On October 7, 2024, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a new report on the current trends in the workings of organized crime organizations in Southeast Asia.

                The report, titled Transnational Organized Crime and the Convergence of Cyber-Enabled Fraud, Underground Banking, and Technological Innovation: A Shifting Threat Landscape,[1] is the second in a series of ongoing threat analyses produced by the UNODC.

                On September 27, 2024, the Commonwealth of Australia extradited Chinese national Jin Guanghua, 53, to the United States.  Mr. Guanghua and three other co-conspirators were charged with selling tobacco to North Korea via the American financial system in defiance of American sanctions on the North Korean state. The indictment from 2022 tells of a scheme spanning a decade and totaling nearly $80 million in transactions.[1]  Mr. Guanghua made his first court appearance on September 30, 2024, and faces a maximum penalty of 30 years for bank fraud, 20 years for violating IEEPA, and 20 years for committing money laundering.[2]

                On September 30, 2024, the Court of Appeals in England affirmed an order freezing up to US $778 million of Isabel dos Santos’ assets, rejecting her appeal.  Unitel, an Angolan telecommunications company, sued her over loans it made to a separate Dutch company, Unitel International Holdings (UIH), in 2012 and 2013, when she was a Unitel director, to fund UIH’s acquisition of shares in telecoms companies.  The Court of Appeals’ ruling said dos Santos owns and controls UIH.[1]

             On September 26, 2024, Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and other officials announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, with bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy offenses.

             The Capital Market Authority (CMA) in Saudi Arabia has the primary authority to monitor and regulate securities and capital markets, including the Tadawul Stock Exchange. In May 2024, the Capital Market Authority announced that Turki Aldakhil, the former Saudi ambassador to the UAE, and 13 investors, were convicted of violating the Capital Market Law (CML) and its implementing regulations due to placing purchase orders that affected the share price.[1] According to Alhurra News, Aldakhil admitted on the X platform that he had violated his investment portfolio's rules for unlawful profits.[2] The Capital Market Law, as per Royal Decree No. (M/30) Dated 31/7/2003, is the main law responsible for governing the investment portfolio. The law's Article 49/C (3) forbids manipulating the price of a traded security on the exchange through a sequence of transactions, including buying, selling, or buying and selling.