On January 25, 2024, United States District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall of the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) sentenced 52-year-old Garri Smith to 48 months in prison for his role in an international bank heist and money laundering scheme spanning seven countries over four years of illicit activity.[1] The sentencing follows up on Smith’s guilty plea in June 2022 and marks the end of his prosecution in the matter since first being arrested in April 2021.[2]

On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice, delivered its Order on the Request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by Ukraine in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).

On January 29, 2024, the United States Department of Justice announced that an indictment has been unsealed against an Iranian and two Canadian nationals for conspiracy to use interstate commerce in the commission of a murder-for-hire plot.

On January 31, 2024, the International Court of Justice (the Court) handed down its judgment in the case concerning the Application of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Ukraine v. Russian Federation).

On January 16, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg delivered its judgment in a case of al-Hawsawi v. Lithuania (application no. 4383/17). The case concerns a national of Saudi Arabia who is currently on trial before a US military commission in Guantánamo Bay on suspicion of being a facilitator and financial manager of al-Qaeda. 

On January 22, 2024, United States authorities reported that four days before Costa Rica extradited Jose Lazaro Cruz, 60, to the U.S. where he was charged with responsibility for the death of his former wife in Virginia. This sentence lacks clarity. I would change but do not know the background information.  

 On January 22, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned the dismissal of a lawsuit by the Mexican Government against seven U.S. gun manufacturers and one gun distributor.

On January 18, 2024, the Council and Parliament of the European Union agreed provisionally on parts of the anti-money laundering package directed at protecting EU citizens and the EU’s financial system against money laundering and terrorist financing.

On January 12, 2024, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment charging a U.S. citizen residing in Canada for directing a multimillion-dollar pyramid scheme under the name 8 Figure Dream Lifestyle LLC (8FDL, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has previously enjoined.

On December 16, 2023, United States Magistrate Judge Taryn A. Merkl arraigned Stephen Burton, a citizen of the United Kingdom, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.