On Thursday, March 26, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it indicted Nicolás Maduro and several of his colleagues on drug-trafficking and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy charges.[1] The colleagues include more than a dozen individuals, notably the Chief Justice of Venezuela’s Supreme Court and the defense minister. According to The Washington Post, Maduro could face a 50-year minimum prison sentence if extradited to the U.S. and convicted.[2]

On March 31, 2020, United States law enforcement agents on the San Diego Tunnel Task Force announced the uncovering on March 19 of a sophisticated drug smuggling tunnel, which goes under the U.S.-Mexico border to a warehouse in a commercial complex in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego. On April 1, 2020, President Donald Trump and law enforcement officials announced the U.S. government started enhanced counter-narcotics operations in the Western Hemisphere.

On April 6, 2020, Guatemala’s foreign ministry said that all flights from the United States returning deported Guatemalan migrants are suspended this week due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to Joaquin Samayoa, a foreign ministry spokesman,  the suspension is only in effect this week, which is when Christians celebrate Holy Week.[1]

GRECO’s Fifth Round Evaluation of Croatia, released earlier this year, evaluates the framework currently in place to prevent corruption among officials with top level executive functions and within the police force.  GRECO is the Group of States against Corruption within the Council of Europe.[1]

On Wednesday, March 5, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a U.S. immigration judge in Memphis ordered a Tennessee man’s extradition to Germany. The man, Friedrich Karl Berger, 94, is a German citizen and served as an armed guard at a concentration camp in Nazi Germany during World War II. According to the DOJ, Judge Rebecca L. Holt made the ruling after “a two-day trial ‘on the basis of his service in Nazi Germany in 1945 as an armed guard of concentration camp prisoners in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp system.[1]

On March 5, 2020, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced the publication of Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (“Voluntary Principles”).  They announced 11 voluntary principles as online measures that companies in the technology industry can select to implement to protect the children who use their platforms from sexual abuse online and to make their platforms more difficult for child sex offenders to exploit.[1]

On March 23, 2020, Swedbank released the investigative report conducted by law firm Clifford Chance showing anti-money laundering (“AML”) and sanctions gaps during the period 2014-2019, mainly in Swedbank’s Baltic operations.[1]  The report[2] comes at a time when Swedbank faces a joint investigation conducted by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority, an investigation by Sweden’s economic crimes body and the U.S. and New York investigative and law enforcement authorities.[3]

On March 23, 2020, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Cohen in the U.S. District Court in St. Louis approved a request to extradite a man to Bosnia to face a war crime charge.[1] According to the extradition request, Adem Kostjerevac, the relator, was a military police officer with the 1^st Muslim Brigade of the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.  On September 17, 1992, the victim, a pregnant Serbian, was arrested after Muslim forces surrounded her village.  She was held for two weeks in the basement of a mill in another small village.[2]

On February 24, 2020, China announced a sweeping controversial national ban on wild animal consumption. However, critics of the “Comprehensively Prohibiting the Illegal Trade of Wild Animals, Eliminating the Bad Habits of Wild Animal Consumption, and Protecting the Health and Safety of the People Decision” point out that the ban still leaves room for wildlife trading. Most notable is the ban’s allowance for wildlife trading within the realms of biomedical research and commercial fur farms, which complicates law enforcement efforts.

On March 3, 2020, the English High Court issued its decision on when the fraud or other iniquity exception overrides the legal professional privilege. The case concerns advice given by the defendant, Dentons Europe LLP, to its former client, Anabus Holdings Limited (“Anabus”).  The claimants in the case are 240 investors whom Anabus invited to invest in gold dust (“the scheme”).  Beginning in the spring of 2010, an agent and network of introducers promoted the scheme.  The scheme closed in October 2010.  Despite the promises of payment, a majority of investors claim the scheme was fraudulent and they lost collectively $6.5 million.[1]