On November 16, 2022, a perfunctory entry appeared in the docket of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case of United States v. Hoskins, Dkt. No. 20-842: Without comment, the Court noted the “issuance of the mandate” in the case.  The issuance of a “mandate” signifies that no pending matters remain in the appellate court, it is the Court’s laconic way of saying that an appeal is over and done with.  In this instance, the issuance was caused by the non-occurrence of an event:  November 11 had been the last day on which the Department of Justice (DoJ) could have sought en banc review of a decision it lost on August 12, 2022 in its appeal of a partial post-trial acquittal of a long-running money laundering and foreign corruption case; without comment, the DoJ declined to do so.

The Department of Justice, on behalf of the US Department of Treasury, has succeeded  in bringing Russian national Alexander Vinnik, accused co-owner of crypto exchange BTC-e,  to the United States for criminal proceedings.    BTC-e was an early success and purportedly one of the largest crypto-exchanges in the world, it is claimed that BTC-e received more than $4 billion worth of bitcoin in the six years of operation before being shut down in 2017.  

On November 1, 2022, the UN Secretary-General transmitted to the UN Security Council two reports on the situation with respect to piracy and armed robbery at sea.

On November 17, 2022, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council issued a judgment affirming the decision of the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago to extradite Jack Austin Warner, the former Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Vice President, to the United States.[1]

 

On November 17, 2022, the District Court in the Hague delivered a long-awaited judgment in  the criminal case concerning the downing of the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 17 on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over Ukrainian territory. All 298 people onboard were killed when the plane was shot down on July 17, 2014.

Dominican drug lord Cesar Emilio Peralta-Adamez plead guilty to importing shipments of cocaine into the United States on November 4, 2022.[1]  A Federal Grand Jury first indicted Peralta in 2018 for conspiracy to import heroin and cocaine into the U.S. Authorities arrested Peralta in Columbia and extradited him to Puerto Rico where he is currently awaiting prosecution.[2]

 

On October 20, 2022, Mozambique filed papers to South Africa’s supreme court of appeal to challenge a ruling that called for the extradition of the nation’s former finance minister, Michael (sometimes Manuel) Chang, to the United States.  The charges against Chang stem from the Hidden Debts scandal and his prosecution has been a point of international tension between Mozambique and the United States.  This is Mozambique’s third bid for Chang’s extradition.[1]

 

On November 7, 2022, U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II in Los Angeles sentenced Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, an international fraudster who obtained and laundered tens of millions of dollars through a series of online scams, to 135 months in federal prison.   

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) obtained a classified FBI report detailing Rwanda’s recent history of abusing Interpol Red Notices and feeding U.S. intelligence officials false information to target political dissidents.  Despite being a U.S. ally receiving hundreds of millions in foreign aid, Rwanda has been engaging in these transnational repression schemes on American soil for years, the OCCRP reports.

The United Nations and the United States government as well as other governments are trying to combat the rising gang violence and chaos in Haiti.  On October 21, the UN Security Council unanimously approved a sanctions regime for Haiti, targeting gang leaders and persons who finance them in an effort to mitigate months of violence, lawlessness, and a humanitarian crisis spiraling out of control.[1]  On November 7, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the unsealing of criminal charges against seven leaders of five Haitian gangs, including gang leaders involved in the armed kidnappings of 16 U.S. citizens in the fall of 2021.[2]  On November 4, 2022, the U.S. and Canada sanctioned corrupt Haitian politicians for narcotics trafficking.[3]