Category: _enforcement

The chief executive officer (CEO) of Company 1, a multi-national corporation headquartered in Malta and with operations in the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and the United States was charged with bribery in an indictment returned on September 30, 2019.

A former managing director of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (Goldman Sachs) was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for his role in a multibillion-dollar bribery and money laundering scheme involving Malaysia’s state-owned investment and development fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

“Today, Roger Ng was sentenced for his role in a massive and egregious bribery and money laundering scheme involving the bribery of high-level foreign officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates and theft of billions of dollars meant to benefit the Malaysian people,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The Justice Department remains firmly committed to holding accountable individuals who engage in corruption, undermine the rule of law, and abuse our financial system to launder their illicit funds.  This sentence sends a strong message to criminals around the world:  if you violate our laws, we will bring you to justice.”

  ASIC has launched court proceedings against two business lending specialists, Green County Pty Ltd and Max Funding Pty Ltd, alleging they issued personal loans without being licensed and without undertaking proper inquiries. ASIC has alleged Green County and Max Funding did not make reasonable inquiries about the purpose of loans, which led to Green County providing personal loans to…

The United States government has requested and obtained a warrant to seize a Russian aircraft valued at $25m, according to a statement released on Wednesday.

The US-made plane, a Boeing 737-7JU, is accused of travelling from a foreign country to Russia, in violation of US law and sanctions implemented after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The plane was last in the US in 2014, according to the statement from the US Attorney’s Office for New York’s Eastern District. But the US alleges the plane has flown in and out of Russia “at least seven times, in violation of federal law”.

U.S. officials have unveiled the latest round of sanctions on Iran over its government’s violence toward women and girls amid the anti-regime protests happening around the country. In a news release, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Treasury Department has implemented sanctions on multiple Iranian officials, company presidents, security leaders and companies for their role in the crackdown on…

Lynda Bennett, 65, of Maggie Valley, North Carolina, was a primary candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District in 2020. In late December 2019, Bennett borrowed $25,000 from a family member, representing that she needed the money for personal expenses because she had to spend a large amount of her own money on her campaign. The day after depositing the loaned money into a personal account, Bennett then caused $80,000, including the $25,000 in loaned funds, to be transferred to the bank account of Lynda Bennett for Congress (LBC), her authorized federal campaign committee. Under the FECA, Bennett was required to report a loan from a third-party individual as a campaign contribution. Bennett knowingly and willfully violated the FECA by reporting through LBC that the full $80,000 was a loan to her campaign using her own personal funds, rather than disclosing that $25,000 of that amount was a loan from another individual.

The United States today announced the unsealing of a warrant for the seizure of a Boeing 737-7JU aircraft owned by PJSC Rosneft Oil Company (Rosneft), a Russian integrated energy company headquartered in Moscow, Russia, headed by Igor Ivanovich Sechin. According to court documents, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued sanctions against Russia. The sanctions impose export controls and license requirements to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The Russia sanctions expanded prohibitions on the export, reexport or in-country transfer of, among other things, U.S.-manufactured aircraft to or within Russia without a valid license or license exception for aircraft owned or controlled, or under charter or lease, by Russia and/or Russian nationals. In this case, these sanctions bar a plane that was built or manufactured in the United States from entering Russia without a valid license. 

A military veteran accused of telling an undercover FBI agent about a plan to “wipe out” the nation’s Jewish population was convicted on Tuesday of storming the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. A federal judge heard trial testimony without a jury before convicting Virginia resident Hatchet Speed, a former Navy reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden is scheduled to sentence Speed on May 8 for his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McFadden convicted Speed of all five charges.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has declared Transparency International unwelcome in Russia, describing the Berlin-based organization on Monday as going beyond its mandate to interfere into the country’s internal affairs. “It has been established that the activities of this organization clearly go beyond its declared goals and objectives,” the office said in a statement. “Formally acting as an organization fighting corruption…

The FTC sued Raging Bull and its owners in December 2020 as part of Operation Income Illusion, a nationwide law enforcement effort targeting deceptive income claims. The FTC charged that the company used bogus earnings claims to trick people into paying for investment strategies and recommendations, and then trapped them into hard-to-cancel subscription plans with costly fees. The FTC’s complaint noted that consumers who purchased the site’s services lost millions of dollars in their investments.

In March 2022, Raging Bull and its owners agreed to a settlement with the FTC that required them to pay $2.425 million, end their earnings deception, get affirmative approval from consumers for subscription sign ups, and provide them with a simple method to cancel recurring charges.

The United States and California filed the suit alleging that HVI Cat Canyon, which previously owned and operated multiple oil and gas production facilities in Santa Barbara County, California, was liable for:

12 oil spills into waters of the United States in violation of the Clean Water Act;
17 oil spills into waters of the state in violation of state law;
Reimbursement of the federal and state governments’ costs of cleaning up the oil spills;
Natural resource damages under state law for harm to fish, plant, bird, or animal life and habitat; and
Numerous violations of federal Oil Pollution Prevention Regulations identified in 16 EPA inspections across 11 facilities.

Sean Colville Niven has been permanently banned from providing financial services and engaging in credit activities, after he was convicted in the Perth Magistrates Court for two counts of offences contrary to the Bankruptcy Act. The court found Niven guilty of making a declaration that he knew was false, and for disposing of property intending to defraud creditors.

An indictment was unsealed today charging Terren S. Peizer, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ontrak Inc., a publicly traded health care company, for allegedly engaging in an insider trading scheme in which he fraudulently used Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to trade Ontrak stock. “Mr. Peizer is accused of using his insider knowledge as CEO of a publicly traded company to line his own pockets in violation of his duty to his company and its shareholders,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California. “Mr. Peizer allegedly exploited material nonpublic information and tried to shield himself with a rule designed to ensure a fair and level playing field for all investors. With this indictment, we again affirm that the law applies equally to all and that corporate executives who unlawfully denigrate the integrity of our financial markets will be held accountable.”

Two Kansas men were arrested today on charges related to a years-long scheme to circumvent U.S. export laws that included the illegal export of aviation-related technology to Russia after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and the imposition of stricter restrictions on exports to Russia.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has filed a civil forfeiture complaint against six real properties located in New York, New York; Southampton, New York; and Fisher Island, Florida, worth approximately $75 million. The complaint alleges that the properties beneficially owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg are the proceeds of sanctions violations and were involved in international money laundering transactions. The case arises in the wake of the indictment of Vekselberg’s alleged strawman, Vladimir Voronchenko, a fugitive previously charged in the Southern District of New York. In the Eastern District of New York, a five-count indictment was unsealed today charging Ilya Balakaev, 47, of Moscow, with various offenses related to a years-long scheme to illegally smuggle sensitive devices used in counterintelligence operations from the United States to Russia for the benefit of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the principal intelligence and security agency of the Russian government.

Balakaev is further charged with illegally exporting a gas detector and related software from the United States to Russia for the benefit of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). Concurrent with today’s action in the Eastern District of New York, the Department of Commerce separately issued a Temporary Denial Order denying the export privileges of Balakaev and his company, Radiotester OOO (aka Radiotester LLC), for 180 days with the possibility of renewal.

According to court documents, Jo Ann Macrina, 66, of Daytona Beach, Florida, served as the Commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management from 2011 through May 2016. During Macrina’s tenure, the City of Atlanta awarded millions of dollars in contracts to an architectural, design, and construction management and services firm based in Atlanta. Macrina took multiple steps to steer lucrative contracts toward the firm’s joint venture. Those actions included casting aside prior final scores ranking potential vendors where the joint venture ranked near the bottom, replacing two evaluators who previously represented the Department of Watershed Management with herself and Macrina’s employee, and scoring the joint venture higher than all other evaluators during a reevaluation.

In exchange for providing the firm’s executive vice president with access to confidential information and preferential treatment on City of Atlanta projects, Macrina was offered a job and accepted things of value. For instance, Macrina accepted $10,000 in cash, a diamond ring, a room at a luxury hotel in Dubai, and landscaping work at her home from the firm’s executive vice president either directly or through another employee of the firm. Shortly after Macrina’s employment with the City of Atlanta ended, she began working for the firm. Between June 2016 and September 2016, the firm and its executive vice president paid Macrina $30,000 in four separate payments.