In a resolution adopted on July 10, 2020, with 534 votes to 25 and 122 abstentions, Members of the European Parliament welcomed the European Commission’s Action Plan on how to fight effectively against money laundering and terrorist financing (AML-TF resolution) and highlighted the most pressing changes needed to achieve an efficient EU framework.

The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which contains several controversial provisions, had its 2nd Reading in the UK House of Commons on September 23, 2020 and started its Committee stage on October 6. The Government presented the Bill on March 18, 2020.[1]

                On October 22, 2020, the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (Goldman Sachs or the Company), a global financial institution headquartered in New York, New York, and Gold Sachs (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (GS Malaysia), its Malaysian subsidiary, settled criminal charges. The settlement required them to admit to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)in connection with a scheme to pay one billion dollars in bribes to high-ranking government officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi to obtain valuable business for Goldman Sachs, underwriting approximately $6.5 billion in three bond deals for 1Malasyia Development Bhd. (1MDB). Goldman Sachs earned hundreds of millions in fees on the deals.  Goldman Sachs will pay more than $2.9 billion as part of a coordinated resolution with criminal and civil authorities in the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, and elsewhere.[1]

On October 14, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, J&F Investimentos SA (J&F), a multinational enterprise headquarters in Brazil and engaged primarily in meat and agriculture businesses, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The plea requires it to pay a criminal fine of more than $256 million. The charges concern schemes by J&F to pay millions of dollars in bribes to Brazilian government officials through, inter alia, bank accounts based in New York.[1] Simultaneously J&F entered into a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On October 1, 2020, the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) and four academicians who work with the International Criminal Court (ICC) brought a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Trump Administration, alleging that the executive order and sanctions against ICC officials are unconstitutionally invalid.[1]

On October 1, 2020, attorneys at Hilliard Shadowen LLP and Hilliard Martinez Gonzales LLP filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to hold the United States accountable for the cross-border killings of multiple Mexican citizens.[1] The Petitioners are family members of six victims killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents. The victims include 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot in the back 10 times, Guillermo Arevalo who was picnicking with his wife and daughters along the Rio Grande, and four others. The death of 15-year-old Sergio Hernández sparked a Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that Hernández’s family could not sue the border patrol agent who killed Hernandez.[2]

On October 9, 2020, United States Magistrate Judge Vera M. Scanlon arraigned Yamil Abreu Navarro in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York on an indictment charging him with international heroin distribution. On October 8, the Dominican Republic extradited him to the U.S.[1]

On September 16, 2020, in the latest case involving French prosecution of international corruption, the Paris Criminal Court convicted and sentenced the former longtime head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Lameke Diack and his son Papa Massata Diack to prison. The Paris Criminal Court convicted the men for their respective roles in soliciting and accepting payments from Russian athletes, in order to cover upallegations of doping and enable the latter to continue competing, including in the 2012 London Olympic Games.[1]

On October 15, 2020, a federal grand jury in San Francisco, California, returned a 39 count indictment,[1] charging Robert T. Brockman, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an Ohio-based software company with hiding $2 billion dollars worth in income in what the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson characterized as the largest tax evasion case in U.S. history.[2] On the same day the Justice Department (DOJ) announced that Robert F. Smith, the Chairman and CEO of a San-Francisco based private equity company, entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA) with DOJ for his involvement from 2000 through 2015 in an illegal scheme to conceal income and evade millions in taxes by using an offshore trust structure and offshore bank accounts.[3] Smith worked with Brockman and will cooperate through his NPA in the prosecution of Brockman.

The United States on September 15, 2020 imposed Global Magnitsky Sanctions[i] on Union Development Group Co., Ltd.,[ii] the Chinese state-owned company (“UDG”) behind the Dara Sakor development project that is part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (“BRI” also known as the New Silk Road or One Belt, One Road). The move is significant and might signal a ratcheting up of U.S. opposition to the BRI, which has largely constituted rhetoric, diplomatic lobbying,[iii] and relatively tepid competition, such as by the establishment of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).[iv]