On December 22, 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) (Grand Chamber) delivered a judgment in the case of M.S. (Case C‑237/21).

On December 16, 2022, the Trial Panel I of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) handed down its first Judgement against Salih Mustafa.  The Judgement found Mustafa guilty of several war crimes, including arbitrary detention, torture, and murder, sentencing him to 26 years in prison.  The war crimes were committed in April 1999 in the village of Zllash, Kosovo by the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) BIA Guerilla subunit under Mustafa’s command.

On October 6, 2022, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska announced the unsealing of a 13-count indictment charging Zobaidul Amin, a Bangladeshi national, for his role in operating a child exploitation enterprise, after his arrest in Kuala Lumpur by Malaysian authorities.[1]

This book gives insightful and comprehensive information on cross-border litigation by discussing issues in sequence as they are likely to be encountered in practice. The book is an updated, reimagined edition of the multi-volume set, International Justice Assistance written by its late author, Bruno Ristau, who was formerly chief of the Foreign Litigation Section in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division when the first edition was published in 1984.

We at the IELR send you the best wishes for a new year.  2022 was momentous for the international enforcement community, and we are grateful to have had you following along with our coverage during our 38th year of discussing international enforcement developments.

On December 22, 2022, Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF) had waived extradition from the Bahamas.  Simultaneously he announced the unsealing of guilty pleas of Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of FTX. [1]

On December 12, 2022, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it has obtained custody of a suspect in the bombing on December 21, 1988, of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland after a bomb was placed in the cargo area of the plane.  Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi (Mas’ud), 71, of Tunisia and Libya, made his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on federal charges, unsealed on the day of his initial appearance.[1]

On December 22, 2022, just hours before an address to the Congress by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Congress approved a bill to enlarge the U.S. government’s authority to prosecute international war crimes suspects who are in the United States, permitting their trial in a federal court regardless of the nationality of the victim or the perpetrator, or where the crime occurred.[1]

On December 19, 2022, UOP LLC, doing business as Honeywell UOP, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., has reach a joint settlement to resolve parallel bribery investigations by criminal and civil authorities in the United States and Brazil arising out of the bribe payments offered to a high-ranking official at Brazil’s state-owned oil company.  The settlement requires Honeywell UOP to pay more than $160 million and agree to a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the U.S. Department of Justice[1] in connection with a criminal information filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Texas, charging the company with conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).[2]

On December 15, 2022, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the  United States Department of Treasury issued in the Federal Register its second set of proposed beneficial ownership regulations (Notice of Proposed Rule Making or NPRM) with respect to furnishing access to the information it receives pursuant to the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and safeguards for protecting the confidentiality of such information.