The International Enforcement Law Reporter is a monthly print and online journal covering news and trends in international enforcement law.
Since September 1985, the International Enforcement Law Reporter has analyzed the premier developments in both the substantive and procedural aspects of international enforcement law. Read by practitioners, academics, and politicians, the IELR is a valuable guide to the difficult and dynamic field of international law.
On April 13, 2025, the United States District Court in Nevada ordered the extradition of former Chief Executive Officer of Microfinance and Small Loans Center (MASLOC), Sedina Christine Tamakloe-Attionu, to Ghana, where she has been convicted in absentia and sentenced to a term of ten years imprisonment.
In its decision made on March 19, 2026, published on April 2, under Article 34 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), the United Nations (UN) Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) has decided to request the UN Secretary-General to urgently refer the situation of enforced disappearances in Mexico to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) for consideration of measures to support the State Party in preventing, investigating, punishing, and eradicating this crime.
On March 30, 2026, Ousman Sonko—a former Interior Minister of The Gambia—appeared before the Higher Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona to challenge his 2024 conviction for crimes against humanity.
On March 2, 2026, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the United States (U.S.) Department of the Treasury proposed special measures concerning MBaer Merchant Bank AG, a financial institution operating outside the U.S., as a primary money laundering concern.
On April 7, 2026, Australian authorities charged a former elite soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, on Tuesday with five counts of war crimes—specifically murder—related to the deaths of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012. Roberts-Smith has already suffered a loss in civil court on the matter when he brought a defamation suit against nine newspapers that ran the story.
On April 7, 2026, Indonesia deported one of Scotland’s highest-profile alleged mafia figures to Amsterdam, ten days after his arrest in Bali. Officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil escorted Steven Lyons onto a flight in Jakarta.
On April 11, 2026, Hoang Van Thai, 39, a Vietnamese man, pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing protected wildlife parts without a license. Hoang Van Thai was convicted of possessing 1,022 gall bladders and 191 tongues of reticulated pythons, a protected wildlife species under the Wildlife Conservation Act 2010, without a license.
On March 30, 2026, the United States (U.S.) Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) sent to the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to implement a whistleblower program by creating a framework to offer incentives and protections to encourage individuals to report information on fraud-related violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), U.S. sanctions programs managed by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and several other laws vital to protecting the U.S. financial system and national security.
On April 1, 2026, Cambodia extradited Li Xiong, a former leader at a Cambodian financial conglomerate accused of money laundering and being a core member of Chinese-Cambodian businessman Chen Zhiu’s criminal financial network.[1] On April 3, Cambodia’s parliament enacted the first law devoted to targeting scam centers accused of defrauding international victims.
Anssaf Ali Mayo, a Yemeni citizen, parliamentarian, and prominent member of the al-Islah party, brought a lawsuit against Hungarian-Israeli Abraham Golan and Americans Isaac Gilmore and Dale Comstock, all former executives or employees of Spear Operations Group, a private military company incorporated in Delaware.
