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UAE Court Dismisses Request to Extradite the Gupta Brothers to South Africa

In our previous post, here, we explained how the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) used its authority under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (“GloMag”) to sanction brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta (the “Guptas”), and their business associate Salim Essa, effectively barring them from the U.S. financial … Continue Reading

Recent South African Publication on Non-Profit Organizations and Financial Crimes

South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) recently issued a public compliance communication on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism relating to non-profit organizations (NPOs). The publication aimed to create “awareness within the NPO sector around the vulnerabilities that NPOs face,” and sets out Financial Action Task Force (FATF) principles relating to NPOs.… Continue Reading

South Africa Publishes More About Money Laundering Vulnerabilities

As noted in a prior blog post, South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (“FIC”) periodically releases financial crime typologies and case studies. Recently it published information about typologies in two different lines of business: (1) casinos and the gambling industry, and (2) the property sector, discussed in this post.… Continue Reading

First Company Convicted of Bribing Foreign Officials Ordered to pay £2.2 million

Smith and Ouzman Ltd and two of its directors, were convicted by a Jury under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906 (POCA) in December 2014, although the company was finally sentenced on 8 January 2016. The company was convicted under the previous legislation because the offences pre-dated the Bribery Act 2010. The small family run … Continue Reading

Deferred Prosecution Agreements: The Sign of Things to Come?

In a landmark decision, the first Deferred Prosecution Agreement (“DPA”) was approved  on Monday at the Royal Courts of Justice, by Lord Justice Leveson.  The DPA was introduced as a means of alternative disposal following a criminal investigation into a corporate organisation back in February 2014, under the Crime and Courts Act 2013[1]. It is … Continue Reading

UK company director jailed for bribing public officials in Africa

In order to win a contract worth £2.26m for making ballot papers, Smith and Ouzman Ltd, a printing firm based in Sussex, gave £395,074 in corrupt payments to public officials in Kenya and Mauritania. In February 2015, Southwark Crown Court jailed Nicholas Smith, the Sales and Marketing Director, for three years and handed his father, … Continue Reading

Oxford University’s publishing arm to pay nearly £1.9 million for corrupt East African operations

David Green QC, the newly-installed director of the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”), has taken action in the High Court against Oxford Publishing Limited (“OPL”), which ordered it to pay £1,895,435, in relation to the unlawful conduct of OPL’s subsidiaries in Tanzania and Kenya. OPL is owned by Oxford University Press (“OUP”), which is the publishing … Continue Reading
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