Tag: z.doj

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. 

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.

The U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have entered into a consent decree with the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act regarding the city’s water pollution control facility that discharges undertreated effluent into Massachusetts Bay.

Undertreated sewage from the city’s existing water treatment facility results in a variety of harmful discharges into Massachusetts Bay, including disease causing organisms and toxic pollutants.

It’s less radical than it sounds. The DOJ isn’t looking to REQUIRE such punishment. It proposes giving “discounts on fines for companies that seek to claw back compensation from corporate wrongdoers.” The punishment is likely to hurt about as much as being hit in the head by a balloon.

On March 2, 2023, the Department of Justice announced several new initiatives that prioritize the investigation and enforcement of economic sanctions evasion, export control violations, and similar economic crimes.  Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a “surge of resources to address a troubling trend: the intersection of corporate crime and national security.” 

On the 25th of February 2023, the European Union (EU) introduced its 10th sanctions package since the invasion of Ukraine. Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated that the new sanctions were addressed to those “instrumental” in the war’s continuation.

The measures target a further 87 individuals and 34 entities in the political, economic and military sectors, bringing the total number to 1,473 and 205 respectively.

The Justice Department announced today that it filed statements of interest in Espin et al. v. Citibank, N.A. and Padao v. American Express National Bank, two lawsuits currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, to address the right of the nation’s servicemembers to bring and participate in class action litigation under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) instead of being forced into privatized arbitration proceedings on their own.

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.”

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.

The strike force’s goal is to “…protect U.S. national security by preventing …sensitive technologies from being used for malign purposes” by “nation-state adversaries” such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The “sensitive technologies” at issue include supercomputing and “exascale” computing, quantum computing, biosciences, and, of course, artificial intelligence.

This development reflects the Administration’s continuing focus on using export control policy and enforcement to advance its national security priorities—of which economic security has become a key subset. The Administration has used the Foreign Direct Product Rule and coordinated its use, particularly regarding advanced semiconductor technology and related tooling, among its allies and partners outside of the traditional multilateral frameworks.  This is yet another example of how the Administration has scaled-up its use of export controls to generate desired outcomes in the areas of technology security and economic competitiveness – both national security priorities – vis-à-vis, in particular, China. The creation of the Disruptive Technologies Strike Force is the latest step by the Administration toward institutionalizing a “whole of government” approach to its novel use of export control policy and enforcement to counter this geopolitical rival.  

Michael S. Flynn was sentenced on Feb. 10 in Bridgeport, Connecticut to fifteen months’ imprisonment and restitution of $1,062,155 for his participation in bid-rigging and fraud schemes targeting public and private entities in Connecticut. This is the seventh sentencing arising out of the investigation into the insulation contracting industry.

Two Amazon marketplace sellers and four of their companies have pleaded guilty to price fixing DVDs and Blu Ray Discs. On Feb. 10 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Bruce Fish of Hayfield, Minnesota, along with BDF Enterprises, Inc., a corporate entity owned by Fish, admitted to participating in a conspiracy to fix the prices of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs sold on the Amazon marketplace. Victor Btesh of Brooklyn, New York, and three New York corporate…

About this time last year, we offered some insight on Economic Espionage and Theft of Trade Secrets, which included a primer on economic espionage, case examples, and avoidance strategies.  We observed that “[w]hile the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has identified China, Russia, and Iran as the three states most capable of committing.

The Justice Department announced today that it has concluded there is reasonable cause to believe that the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LDOC) routinely confines people in its custody past the dates when they are legally entitled to be released from custody, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

On January 17, 2023, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (“AAG”) Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. announced significant revisions to the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, corporate criminal enforcement policy (“CEP”).[1] The new CEP changes offer additional incentives to companies for voluntary self-disclosures, cooperation, and remediation.  The new CEP reflects an increased emphasis on……

  U.S. Department of Justice FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, December 20, 2022 A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland returned an indictment that was unsealed today charging two men for their roles in schemes to defraud investors in CytoDyn Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company (OTCQB: CYDY) based in Vancouver, Washington. According to court documents, Nader Pourhassan, 59, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Kazem Kazempour, 69, of Potomac, Maryland, allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud investors through…