On August 15, 2024, New Zealand’s Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the extradition order of Kim Dotcom to the United States.  Born in Germany, Dotcom moved to New Zealand in 2010 and has fought extradition to the U.S. since 2012.  In 2012, the U.S. government closed his file-sharing site Megaupload and indicted him and three other persons.

       On August 8, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictments of two Iranian nationals and one Pakistani national. Iranian brothers Shahab Mir’kazei and Yunus Mir’kazei, and Pakistani citizen Muhammad Pahlawan were charged with “conspiring to provide and providing material support to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program resulting in death and conspiring to commit violence against maritime navigation and maritime transport involving weapons of mass destruction resulting in death.” 

         Equatorial Guinea has rebuffed South African government requests to release from prison two oil engineers: Frik Potgieter, a South African, and Peter Huxham, a dual South African-British national.  The men are being held on charges of trafficking cocaine.  

         On Monday, July 29, Israeli military police detained nine military reservists at a military base currently holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza. Although officials have not released details about the alleged crimes, the military reservists are undergoing a formal investigation for the suspected abuse of a Palestinian detainee. More specifically, they are being questioned for performing acts of sodomy on the detainee who was hospitalized due to the severity of his physical injuries.

         On Friday, July 19, 2024, the Nigerian government fined Meta Platforms $220 million after an internal investigation revealed the technology conglomerate had repeatedly violated Nigeria’s data protection and consumer rights laws on WhatsApp and Facebook. In a statement issued by Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), officials claimed Meta had violated its data laws in five ways: “Denying Nigerian consumers the right to self-determination, unauthorized transfer and sharing of personal data (including cross-border storage), discriminatory practices and disparate treatment of Nigerian consumers, abuse of dominant market positions, and the tying and bundling of service.”

         On July 29, 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) upheld the validity of various provisions of the EU directive requiring all intermediaries and, in their absence, the taxpayer involved in potentially aggressive cross-border tax arrangements to report them to the competent authorities.  In 2020, some organizations representing lawyers and tax consultants brought proceedings in the Belgian Constitutional Court to annul the Belgian law transposing the directive.  

          Shortly before the Summer recess, some organizations and organs worked together to address a serious problem: human trafficking. The actors included: the European Union, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the US Department of State.

        On July 24, 2024, a grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, returned an indictment charging North Korean national, Rim Jong Hyok, for his participation in a conspiracy to hack and extort U.S. hospitals and other healthcare providers, launder the ransom proceeds, and employ the proceeds to fund additional computer intrusions into defense, technology, and government entities worldwide.