Credit Suisse Group AG, a Switzerland-based financial services company, was fined nearly $100 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the SEC said this week. The commission said Credit Suisse bribed Mozambique government officials and hid the “underlying corruption” by saying the payments were intended to help Mozambique's tuna fishing industry. The company also had “deficient internal accounting controls,” which failed to address FCPA requirements and “address significant and known risks concerning bribery.” Credit Suisse faces about $475 million in total fines, from U.S. and United Kingdom authorities, including the SEC fine, for a range of other financial violations, including operating a hidden debt scheme and paying kickbacks to now-indicted former Credit Suisse investment bankers and their intermediaries.
Aydan Sin of British Columbia was convicted of violating the Arms Export Control Act for exporting defense articles on the U.S. Munitions List to the United Arab Emirates and Colombia, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York said. Sin, who allegedly conspired with Guy Deland and Charan Singh, will serve 46 months in prison. Singh began communicating with an undercover law enforcement agent in 2016 to ask about whether the undercover agent could export firearms from the U.S. to Dubai. The agent advised Sin, Deland and Singh that a license was required from the State Department, establishing that the trio knew about the regulations, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Acknowledging the illegality of the shipments, Sin, Deland and Singh then gave the agent an encrypted BlackBerry device to establish secure communications and wired the agent around $70,000 from Canada to the U.S. as a down payment for the guns. The agent sent Sin and Deland two invoices -- one for a shipment to Dubai and one for a shipment to Colombia. Money for the shipments was wired to a bank account in New York. Charges remain pending against Deland and Singh, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Oleg Nikitin, Russian national and owner of St. Petersburg-based energy company KS Engineering, was sentenced to federal prison for scheming to evade U.S. sanctions, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said. Nikitin was sentenced to 28 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Export Control Reform Act and the Export Administration Regulations. Nikitin was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and is subject to deportation when his sentence ends. KSE, along with Italian company GVA International Oil and Gas Services, will serve five years' probation, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Virgil Griffith, a U.S. citizen residing in Singapore and cryptocurrency expert, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by giving North Korea technical advice on how to use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to skirt U.S. sanctions, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said. Griffith began formulating his plans in 2018, traveling to Pyongyang in 2019 to attend the Pyongyang Blockain and Cryptocurrency Conference. The State Department denied Griffith the right to travel to North Korea, but he went anyway, giving presentations to the North Korean audience, knowing full well that this violated sanctions, the Department of Justice said.
A rare cuneiform tablet with a portion of the ancient literary work Epic of Gilgamesh was returned to Iraq after a federal district court ordered that retail giant Hobby Lobby forfeit the tablet, the Justice Department said. A repatriation ceremony was held Sept. 23 at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The tablet originated in Iraq but then was illegally entered into the U.S. by an auction house that then sold it to Hobby Lobby. The retail chain purchased the tablet to display it at the Museum of the Bible, also in Washington, D.C. Law enforcement seized the tablet, which was ordered July 27 to be returned to Iraq (see 2107280028).
Jahziah Roy Lewis, a United Kingdom citizen, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for exporting firearms outside the U.S. and for conspiring to straw purchase firearms, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia said Sept. 20. Lewis and two accomplices were charged as part of an international weapons trafficking conspiracy to buy and ship around 36 firearms from the U.S. to the U.K. and the Caribbean through the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Justice said. All three co-conspirators claimed to be the actual buyers of the firearms when in fact the actual recipient was someone else. The guns were shipped abroad concealed in household items and using false names on shipping labels, the U.S. attorney said. Many of the guns, bought in Georgia, were recovered in the U.K. and in St. Kitts, having been tied to various criminal networks abroad.
Three former U.S. intelligence community or military members -- Marc Baier, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gericke -- entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, agreeing to pay more than $1.68 million to resolve export control violation charges, the Department of Justice said. The trio worked as senior managers at a United Arab Emirates-based company that carried out computer hacking operations to benefit the UAE government during 2016 to 2019, DOJ said. All three were told repeatedly that their work constituted a “defense service” under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, requiring a license from the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. Nevertheless, all three continued their hacking without a license, court documents laid out.
Three members of a Florida family were charged with conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran and money laundering, the Department of Justice said. Mohammad Faghihi, along with his wife, Farzeneh Modarresi, and sister, Faezeh Faghihi, led Florida-based Express Gene -- a company that allegedly received multiple wire transfers from accounts in Malaysia, China, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, totaling nearly $3.5 million, between October 2016 and November 2020. Some of this money allegedly was used to buy and then ship genetic sequencing equipment to Iran without a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ said.
Iranian national Mehrdad Ansari, a resident of the United Arab Emirates and Germany, was sentenced Sept. 14, after a May 2021 conviction by a federal jury (see 2105100007), to 63 months in prison for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Department of Justice said. Ansari was convicted for his role in a scheme to obtain military sensitive parts for Iran in violation of the Iranian Trade Embargo, DOJ said. This scheme sought to obtain many dual-use military and civilian goods that could be used for many elements of Iran's armed forces, including for “nuclear weapons, missile guidance and development, secure tactical radio communications, offensive electronic warfare, military electronic countermeasures (radio jamming) and radar warning and surveillance systems,” DOJ said.
Hong Kong-based apparel company, Changji Esquel Textile (CJE), should not be granted a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List, the U.S. argued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Resuming litigation after talks between Commerce and CJE broke down (see 2108300058), the Department of Justice said CJE is unlikely to succeed in its case and that the company has not established certain and imminent irreparable harm (Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd., et al. v. Gina M. Raimondo, et al., D.D.C. #21-1798).