On September 8, 2017, Europol and Austria submitted a note to the Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI) addressing the role of criminal hawala in financing a variety of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, money laundering, and terrorism. The document also offers several recommendations to combat criminal use of informal value transfer services.

On September 18, 2017, Joe McNamee, Executive Director of advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi), acting on behalf of a global coalition of civil society organizations, submitted to Alexander Seger, the Executive Secretary of the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) of the Council of Europe, an opinion on the proposed protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. The comments focus on the protection of human rights in the process of drafting new rules on cross-border access to electronic evidence (“e-evidence”).

On September 30, 2017, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 will enter into force in the UK. The act amends the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) to empower the UK High Court, on the application of a UK enforcement agency, to make “Unexplained Wealth Orders” (UWOs). UWOs require respondents to provide a statement setting out the nature and extent of their interest in the property concerned, and explain how they obtained the property, including, in particular, how any costs incurred in obtaining it were met.

On September 6, 2017, a billionaire property developer who has accused high-level Chinese officials of corruptions and is subject to an Interpol Red Notice has applied for asylum in the United States.

On September 6, 2017, a superseding indictment was issued against a former Turkish Minister of the Economy, a former general manager of a Turkish government-owned bank, and two other individuals for conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran and related offenses.

On September 13, 2017, the European Parliament, acting on its own initiative, adopted its resolution on corruption and human rights in third countries. The resolution was approved nearly unanimously (578 votes in favor, 19 votes against, with 68 abstentions). The motion for a resolution was tabled in the Parliament on June 29, 2017.

On August 31, 2017, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Edwin G. Torres issued a 93-page opinion that ordered former Panamanian President Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal to be extradited Panama.

On September 12, 2017, a coalition of international human rights groups submitted a letter to the U.S. Secretaries of State and Treasury, proposing the designation of fifteen persons under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act), which authorizes the President to impose financial sanctions and visa restrictions on foreign persons in response to certain human rights violations and acts of significant corruption.

One of the innovative features of the 1988 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) was that it dealt with the question of reparations to be made to victims and/or members of their families. These reparations include monetary compensation, return of property, rehabilitation, as well as symbolic measures (e.g. an apology). However, depending on the nature of the crimes committed by the convicted defendant(s), the scope of ‘victims’ could extend to cover the population of a whole area. ICC Chamber VIII in its Order delivered on August 17, 2017 in the case of The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi dealt exactly with this kind of reparation. It concluded that the defendant Al Mahdi was liable to pay 2.7 million Euro (approximately 3.15 million USD) in individual reparations as well as in collective reparations to the community of Timbuktu in the Republic of Mali. On September 27, 2016, Trial Chamber VIII had unanimously found Al Mahdi to be guilty of co-perpetrating the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against religious and historic buildings and sites in the summer of 2012 and had sentenced him to nine years’ imprisonment.   

Increasing global anti-corruption initiatives continue to serve social and economic interests.  This case addresses an interesting legal question about the enforceability of immunities that the World Bank Group asserts are against both the production of its documentation and the actions of its personnel in the context of a criminal investigation and prosecution.