Background: US Faces Judicial Broadside for Immigration Policy Shift
Under the government’s new guidelines, none of these 20-year-olds can turn to New York courts for relief, and the federal government explicitly claims that they can be sent to unfit parents back home.
“What sense does that make?” a flabbergasted Judge Koeltl asked a government attorney.
Koeltl also voiced alarm that changes came without a notice in the Federal Register, the U.S. government’s official journal for agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices.
As attorney Malionek put it: “that just shows why their new policy is arbitrary to begin with.
Courthouse News; 25 Feb 2019
Nearly three years before his arrest this week in Los Angeles International Airport, a top leader of the cryptocurrency company OneCoin chatted with a co-founder about their customers.
Federal prosecutors recounted the Sept. 21, 2016, conversation in a criminal complaint unsealed Friday, charging Konstantin Ignatov, 33, of Sofia, Bulgaria, with a multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme.
According to the transcript, the unnamed co-founder sneered: “These ppl are idiots.”
“as you told me, the network would not work with intelligent people,” Ignatov is quoted as replying, adding a winking emoticon to his message.
Following his arrest Wednesday, Ignatov faces up to 20 years imprisonment if convicted of conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Still at large is OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova, the 38-year-old older sister of the defendant who is charged in a separate indictment.
Federal prosecutors in New York claim that Ignatova funneled more than $400 million through a thicket of Cayman Island and Irish shell companies with help from 50-year-old lawyer Mark Scott. A former partner at the major law firm Locke Lord, Scott was arrested on Sept. 5, 2018. He faces up 20 years imprisonment if convicted of conspiring to commit money laundering.
Courthouse News
ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) reporter Will Fitgibbon reports recent movement on the ongoing fallout from the Panama Papers.
According to a January 29 ICIJ report, “the first person arrested in the United States in relation to the Panama Papers has pleaded not guilty before a New York court, according to recently-released records that provide new details on the case and the long road ahead.
The Southern District of New York announced on December 4 the unsealed indictment and the charges against four men who, SDNY allege, played “their roles in the decades-long scheme to defraud the United States.”
U.S. officials arrested Gaffey on Dec 4. He is one of four men charged with a range of offenses, including conspiracy to commit tax evasion and money laundering, wire fraud and failing to file tax returns.
ICIJ
Ramses Owens, 50, a Panamanian citizen; Dirk Brauer, 54, a German citizen; Richard Gaffey, 74, a U.S. citizen, of Medfield, Massachusetts; and Harald Joachim Von Der Goltz, 81, a German citizen, have been charged in an 11-count indictment. Owens, Gaffey and Von Der Goltz are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit tax evasion, one count of wire fraud, and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Owens and Brauer have been charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Gaffey and Von Der Goltz are additionally charged with four counts of willful failure to file an FBAR. Von Der Goltz has been additionally charged with two counts of making false statements.
Three of the four defendants named in the indictment have been arrested. Brauer, who worked as an investment manager for Mossfon Asset Management, S.A. (“Mossfon Asset Management”), an asset management company closely affiliated with Mossack Fonseca, was arrested in Paris, France, on Nov. 15. Von Der Goltz, a former U.S. resident and taxpayer, was arrested in London, United Kingdom, on Dec. 3. Gaffey, a U.S.-based accountant, was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts earlier today. Owens, a Panamanian attorney who worked for Mossack Fonseca, remains at large.
US DOJ Press Release
Harald Joachim Von Der Goltz will be extradited from the UK according to a court filing on February 28 and should arrive in the US in ‘about two months.’
[*Note: The extradition is from the UK, where Von Der Goltz was arrested, not Germany as the Fitzgibbons incorrectly wrote in the following tweet.]