The Coalition for Integrity, an anti-corruption and good government non-profit, non-partisan organization, announces an essay contest for students on: “Attacking Corruption and Promoting Integrity in the United States and around the Globe.” Eligibility is open to any student attending a college or university in the United States or any U.S. citizen or permanent resident attending a college or university outside the United States. Contestants may be undergraduate students, graduate students, or students in a professional school. They can have any disciplinary or professional school background relevant to understanding and ameliorating the problem of corruption.

Essays should be written in English and be no more than 10,000 words, although shorter essays are welcome. Writers should include a note from their college or university registrar attesting either to their current student status or to their graduation in 2018. Submissions must be made to administration@coalitionforintegrity.org by midnight on July 31, 2018.

More information about the contest may be found at the following link: 2018-Student-Essay-Contest.

On Monday, January 29, 2018, the Justice Department announced charges against eight individuals accused of manipulating U.S. commodities markets for financial gain. Seven of the eight individuals were charged with spoofing. Spoofing refers to a fraud tactic that involves the placing of hundreds to thousands of “spoof orders” – orders that the spoofer does not intend to trade – in order to incentive market participants to buy, sell, or trade at manipulated prices. In doing so, spoofing fools market participants to make their investment decisions based on a false perception of supply and demand.

The individuals charged are James Vorley, 37, of the United Kingdom; Cedric Chanu, 39, a French citizen; Edward Bases, 55, of New Canaan, Connecticut; John Pacilio, 53, of Southport, Connecticut; Jitesh Thakkar, 41, of Naperville, Illinois; Jiongsheng (“Jim”) Zhao, 30, of Australia; Andre Flotron, 53, a Swiss national residing in Wayne, New Jersey; and Krishna Mohan, 33, of New York, New York. Vorley, Chanu, Bases, Pacilio, Thakkar, and Jiongsheng were charged in the Northern District of Illinois, Flotron was charged in the District of Connecticut, and Mohan was charged in the Southern District of Texas. The spoofers primarily targeted the precious metals and E-mini futures contracts markets.

The charges constitute the largest futures market criminal enforcement action in the Justice Department’s history.

In prepared remarks delivered on Monday, Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan highlighted the assortment of methods used to identify market manipulation and gather evidence in the cases. In addition “traditional law enforcement techniques” and cooperation with the private sector, authorities used data analysis methods to “identify spoofing patterns through sophisticated analysis of market-level data.” Cronan noted that, in the future, the Department expects to make even greater use of data analysis to identify and counter spoofing.

For more coverage and analysis of this enforcement action, see the February 2018 issue of the International Enforcement Law Reporter.

On June 25, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Brinkema in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Hyong Kwon Kim, a citizen of South Korea and, since 1998, a legal permanent resident of the United States, resided in Massachusetts and later in Connecticut, to serve a sentence of six-months imprisonment for failing to report accounts in Switzerland with a value exceeding $28 million.  The sentence took into account Kim’s cooperation with the government, which occurred for more than a five-year span.

Kim conspired with a host of foreign enablers, including Dr. Edgar H. Paltzer, his Swiss attorney who pleaded guilty in 2013 in the Southern District of New York, and bankers to conceal his assets and income in Swiss accounts held in his own name, the name of a relative, and in the names of sham corporate entities.

In 2008, as Credit Suisse closed accounts held in the names of sham entities owned by persons residing in the United States, Kim refused to bring his assets to the United States. Instead, he transferred his assets to another Swiss bank. Kim send coded messages from the United States to his Swiss banker in order to maintain control of his account.  Undoubtedly, Kim’s conduct to continue to try to hide his assets was an exacerbating fact.

The Department of Justice announced the sentence in a press release.

The IELR will discuss the case in more detail  in the February issue.

From Michael P. Scharf,  Dean of Case Western University School of Law:  

As documented by the developments covered in the WCPW e-newsletter, international criminal law has become one of the fastest growing and highest profile areas of law.  Taught by leading experts in the field, the Case Western Reserve University LL.M in International Criminal law will provide individuals who hold a degree in law with an in-depth knowledge of international criminal law and procedure, international humanitarian law, and national security law, and will equip them to practice international criminal law before international tribunals or national courts.

Now in its tenth year, there are seven unique aspects of the Case Western Reserve International Criminal Law LLM, which I’d like to especially call to your attention:

First, Case Western Reserve is known around the world for the strength of its international criminal law program.  Program faculty include a former State Department official, a former Senior Counsel at the IMF, the former head of the International Branch in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s International and Operational Law Division, a Senior Counsel for Human Rights First – Law and Security Program, a Senior Coast Guard lawyer, and the senior trial attorney in the Charles Taylor trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Reflecting the strength of our program, in 2005, the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone nominated our War Crimes Research initiative for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2008 the Case Western team won the World Championship round of the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.  Based on a survey of international law professors, the 2018 rankings issue of US News and World Report ranked our program among the top twelve international law programs in the nation, and International Jurist magazine ranks our LLM program best in the country.

Second, our International Criminal Law LL.M Program is designed as an elite and intimate program, with enrollment limited to approximately five LL.M students per year.  We provide generous scholarships and one of those students may be a full-scholarship “Distinguished Visiting Jurist,” whose presence is designed to enhance the program and facilitate networking.   Our last Distinguished Jurist was Duncan Gaswaga, currently a judge on Uganda’s High Court War Crimes Chamber.

Third, among the dozen international criminal law-related courses we offer, you can enroll in the War Crimes Research Lab, taught by former Chief Trial Attorney of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Jim Johnson, in which students write research memoranda at the request of international war crimes tribunals, piracy courts, the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions, and INTERPOL on cutting edge issues pending before those institutions.

Fourth, as part of the program, our International Criminal Law LL.M students may receive a semester’s worth of credit by interning at one of the international war crimes tribunals, a Piracy Court, UNODC, the General Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Coast Guard, or INTERPOL in the spring semester.

Fifth, our international Criminal Law LL.M students are invited to be editors of War Crimes Prosecution Watch, the e-newsletter that goes out every two weeks to war crimes prosecutors, judges, and more than 15,000 experts in the field.

Sixth, we host several major lectures and an annual international criminal law-related symposium, which bring dozens of leading experts in the field to the Law School each year.  Recent speakers have included: Sean Murphy, ILC Special Rapporteur for the Convention on Crimes Against Humanity; Brenda Hollis, Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone; Stephen Rapp, US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues; Hon. Christine Van den Wyngaert, Judge of the ICC; Sir Christopher Greenwood, UK Judge on the International Court of Justice; Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Robert Petit, Chief Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; Richard Goldstone, former Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY and ICTR and author of the Goldstone Commission Report on Gaza; William Schabas, Commissioner on the International Truth Commission for Sierra Leone; Fatua Bensuada , the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC; and the late Cherif Bassiouni who was known as “the father of international criminal law.”

Finally, we have placed 135 students in externships at the six international war crimes tribunals, and our alumni include individuals who have served as a member of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a member of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Tribunal; a Legal Adviser to the Chambers of the International Criminal Court; a member of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon; a prosecutor in the Office of Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions; a lawyer at INTERPOL; several distinguished law professors, and the Judge Advocate General of the US Navy Reserve.

To apply for the International Criminal Law LLM Degree, click: http://law.case.edu/Academics/Degrees/LLM/LLM-in-International-Criminal-Law

To sample one of our International Criminal Law courses (offered free on demand by Coursera), click: https://www.coursera.org/learn/international-criminal-law

On December 1, 2017, the Associated Press reported that according to a confidential memorandum INTERPOL was reviewing 40,000 red notices to ensure they were not politically motivated.  A red notice is a request any of the 192 member countries can disseminate via INTERPOL’s channels to seek the location and arrest of a wanted person for the purposes of his or her extradition.  Article 3 of the INTERPOL Constitution strictly forbids the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.  However, in a number of cases INTERPOL has found that some of its member countries have used the organization’s resources to persecute political opponents and other victims of unlawful criminal prosecutions.

The memorandum reflects the November 20 meeting between INTERPOL and European Union officials held after two European Union citizens, Dogan Akhanli, a German-Turkish writer, and Hamza Yalcin, a Swedish-Turkish journalist, were detained in Spain at Turkey’s request disseminated via INTERPOL’s channels.  Akhanli and Yalcin fled Turkey years ago and were granted refugee status in Europe.  Unfortunately, like many reports and studies behind INTERPOL’s policies and regulations, the full text of the memorandum is not available to the general public.  If INTERPOL does indeed strive to observe human rights, as it must under its Constitution, it should be transparent about such initiatives.  So far, the reports in the media leave more questions than answers.

It is unclear how exactly INTERPOL is planning on conducting such a massive review in an effective and objective manner.  To thoroughly examine 40,000 red notices to ensure they are not politically motivated would be a colossal undertaking.  The volume of information requiring careful and comprehensive consideration would be enormous, even if INTERPOL’s staff and funding were significantly increased.  In this regard, it is important to remember that in many cases INTERPOL would have to go far beyond what’s already recorded in its files, that is, the minimum information a government must produce to have its request disseminated, such as the nature of the charge behind the red notice, the identity particulars, the description of the facts of the case, and a reference to the country’s criminal statute and a valid arrest warrant.  To determine whether the red notice is politically motivated or not, INTERPOL would often need objective information about all the circumstances of the case.  In this regard, the high volume of information is not the only reason to question the effectiveness and objectivity of such a review.  Because INTERPOL’s rules prohibit the organization from sharing any information it receives from a government about a particular case without the government’s consent, INTERPOL would often have to look to that government alone for any objective information.

The report, citing the memorandum, rightfully points to the reforms INTERPOL recently undertook to expand the rights of individuals.  However, despite the reforms, the existing redress mechanism for individuals still lacks some crucial safeguards inherent to the modern democratic due process, such as the right to a hearing, the right to examine the evidence produced by the government, and the right to appeal.  In June 2014, the INTERPOL Executive Committee endorsed a new policy on refugees.  The policy, however, does not guarantee any refugee the right to have the red notice deleted.  It is formulated in such a way that it allows INTERPOL to make exceptions and deny a refugee the relief whenever the organization deems proper.  Another important gap is that the policy doesn’t grant refugees an exception to the general rule that INTERPOL doesn’t disclose whether there is information about the individual in its databases without the government’s consent.  As a result, refugees, like other individuals, often learn that their names are recorded in the organization’s databases after they are detained due to the INTERPOL alert.  This is one of the main reasons why the detention of individuals, like Akhanli and Yalcin, continues despite the fact that the policy has been in place for several years.

To its credit, INTERPOL continues to engage in a dialogue with human rights advocates who seek to ensure that the organization isn’t used to persecute political opponents or aid an otherwise unlawful prosecution.  INTERPOL is in need of further reforms to guarantee individuals due process.  It should actively work towards achieving this goal while staying fully transparent about its activities in this area.

Yuriy Nemets is the managing member at NEMETS, a law firm based in Washington, DC.  Yuriy is an attorney with over fifteen years of experience in domestic and international litigation and arbitration, international extradition, corporate, banking, transportation, international trade and investments, and intellectual property law.  He has authored publications about international extradition, corporate, banking, and intellectual property law.

After 32 years and 33 volumes, the International Enforcement Law Reporter is delighted to have vamped up its online presence! We just launched a Facebook page, where we will be regularly posting updates and exclusive offers. You can check out our Facebook here.

In addition to following our new Facebook page, here are all of the ways you may now connect with the IELR online:

Our website, http://ielr.com/, provides analysis on the latest developments in the international enforcement law field. This companion blog supplements that analysis.

The Master of Arts in Financial Integrity – Case Western Reserve University

The course of study is intended for professionals who design and implement anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation financing policies and related integrity initiatives. Taught by leading academics and practitioners from around the world, the MAFI program is the first of its kind offered by a major research university.

To obtain the MAFI degree, students must successfully complete eight courses for a total of 32 credits. The 2017-2018 MAFI tuition rate is $2,106 per credit hour.  Scholarship aid is available.

Program Format

Courses are conducted for 16 months through a series of intensive, weekend sessions held on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Students may participate via video conferencing.  The next cohort, beginning October 20, 2017, will be taught in Washington, D.C., USA.

Required Courses

• Criminology of Financial Integrity
• Inroduction to Preventive Measures
• Introduction to Investigations and Law Enforcement
• International Cooperation in Civil and Criminal Matters
• Building and Implementing an Effective Preventive Measures Compliance Program
• Building and Prosecuting Criminal and Civil Financial Integrity Cases
• Practicum
• Capstone Research Project

Electives

• Selected topics in customer acceptance and transaction monitoring systems
• Selected topics in national financial intelligence units
• Mutual Evaluations
• Anti-money laundering and the financing of terrorism and proliferation: theories of global justice

Admissions Requirements

Applicants should have a BA or equivalent degree and professional experience in financial integrity or a related field.

The application deadline is October 16, 2017.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What about remote attendance?
  Courses are available remotely through live video conferencing. However, students are urged to attend as many classes as possible to ensure both in depth learning and professional networking.
• What time are classes held?
  The classes are held one weekend a month from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• Is financial assistance available?
  Yes! We have financing to provide merit scholarships. Other types of aid may include government loans and financial assistance through employers.
• How long does it take to complete the degree?
  October 2017 to December 2018, or 16 months.
• What are the admissions requirements?
  BA or professional experience in financial integrity or a related field.

Complete information on course content and our internationally recognized stellar faculty can be found at http://www.law.case.edu/Academics/Degrees/Master-of-Arts-in-Financial-Integrity

For more information contact MAFI@case.edu.