On August 27, 2024, Nordea Bank accepted a $35 million civil penalty from a top regulator in New York state for its role in the Panama Papers scandal.  The Finland-based bank was accused of improperly policing its accounts and aiding money laundering operations – among other criminal activities -- in the process. 

    On September 2, 2024, the United States  Justice Department announced the seizure of a Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft owned and operated for the benefit of Nicolás Maduro Moros and persons affiliated with him in Venezuela. The U.S.  seized the plane in the Dominican Republic and transferred to the Southern District of Florida at the request of the U.S. based on violations of U.S. export control and sanctions laws.

                 On August 21, 2024, Guatemalan authorities apprehended seven individuals linked to the tragic deaths of 53 migrants in San Antonio, Texas in June 2022.  The operation was conducted in coordination with U.S. law enforcement and involved the execution of raids at the residences of seven suspects implicated in the human smuggling network.[1]  These arrests represent a crucial development in the ongoing efforts by the United States and Guatemala to dismantle transnational human smuggling networks – but also highlight the ongoing challenges within the Guatemalan legal system that could complicate the prosecution of these seven individuals.

                 On August 14, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Canadian authorities enacted two policy changes regarding the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the United States.[1]  The STCA has been in effect since 2002 and allows Canada and the U.S. to share responsibility for processing refugee applications.[2]  The updated Agreement makes two major changes: decreasing the time migrants are allowed with their lawyers to a minimum of four hours and requiring migrants to have their official documents ready for screening to see if they are subject to the 2002 STCA.[3]  In the original STCA from 2002, migrants were given a minimum of 24 hours with their attorneys, and migrants were able to postpone screenings by border agents to gather documents that would prove that they merited an exemption.[4]

                 On June 27, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, finding that when the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) claims a defendant has violated securities antifraud provisions and pursues civil penalties, the defendant is entitled to a jury trial in federal court according to the Seventh Amendment. This decision is significant because it places limitations on the SEC’s use of its in-house tribunal with administrative law judges (ALJs), which the SEC commonly uses when presenting antifraud claims. The decision also has important implications for international enforcement cases involving civil penalties.

                 In June 2024, Germany issued an arrest warrant for Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a Ukrainian man suspected of being involved in the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26, 2022, to Poland. German officials believe Volodymyr, who is a diving expert, was a member of the group that placed the explosives on the pipelines. Volodymyr fled Poland due to Germany’s failure to include his name in a database of wanted persons and his current whereabouts are unknown. According to Anna Adamiak, the Polish National Public Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson, “Free crossing of the Polish-Ukrainian border by the above-mentioned person was possible because German authorities … did not include him in the database of wanted persons, which meant that the Polish Border Guard had no knowledge and no grounds to detain Volodymyr Z.”

               On August 24, 2024, French judicial investigators arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov just days after the United States Department of Justice announced that F.B.I. agents searched the homes of two prominent persons with connections to Russian state media.On August 29, French prosecutors indicted him.

                   According to Human Rights Watch, popular social media activist Steve Akam of Cameroon, who goes by the alias Ramon Cotta, has likely been forcibly disappeared. He was last seen on July 31^st, in a video that shows him handcuffed and in Cameroonian police custody. Thus far, Cameroonian authorities have refused to disclose Akam’s location, respond to information requests from his lawyers, or even acknowledge his detention.

               The German Government is continuing to proactively pursue enablers involved in the cum-ex dividend cases.  On June 24, 2024, the government encountered problems when a German court found Christian Olaerius, the former head of Hamburg’s MM Warburg, too infirm to stand trial. German prosecutors are also going after the outstanding balance of a €14 million judgment a German court imposed on Martin Shields, a British stockbroker in 2020 after he was convicted for his role in cum-ex trading.

                       In an exclusive interview with BBC News, the parents of an eleven-year-old girl, who was allegedly killed by a U.S. diplomat residing in Zimbabwe, have expressed they would like him to return to Zimbabwe and formally apologize to them for his actions. On June 3, 2024, Ruvarashe Takamhanya was allegedly run over by a diplomat on her way to school. Ruvarashe had allegedly been crossing the road with her best friend when she was suddenly hit. Juliana Vito, her mother, was alerted of the accident by her neighbors and rushed to the crash site. According to her, the driver of the car that hit her daughter was not at the crash site when she arrived, and the diplomat’s colleagues later informed her that he had fled the scene because he was greatly impacted by the accident.