Esquenazi speaks, checking in on Goldman Sachs, and released. It’s all here in the Friday roundup.
Esquenazi Speaks
In 2011, Joel Esquenazi was convicted of one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA and wire fraud; seven counts of FCPA violations; one count of money laundering conspiracy; and 12 counts of money laundering for a bribery scheme involving Haiti Teleco. Esquenazi was sentenced to an FCPA record 15 years in prison and his conviction was affirmed by the 11th Circuit in 2014 (see here) resulting in the two factor control and function test for determining whether an enterprise is an “instrumentality” under the FCPA.
Esquenazi was recently released from prison due to COVID concerns to serve the remainder of his sentence at home. In this approximate 25 minute podcast with his appellate counsel (Markus Funk – Perkins Coie), Esquenazi talks about the circumstances of his case, the conduct of the trial court judge, his journey through the federal prison system and his time in prison (including over 7,000 hours of tutoring).
Checking In On Goldman Sachs
This 2018 post summarized criminal charges against former Goldman Sachs employees Roger Ng and Tim Leissner for paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials in connection with 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s state-owned and state-controlled investment development company.
This post wondered what it all means for Goldman Sachs.
According to this article
“Goldman Sachs is trying to get federal prosecutors to ease up on the bank for its role in a brazen scheme to loot billions of dollars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Lawyers for the bank have asked Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to review demands by some federal prosecutors that Goldman pay more than $2 billion in fines and plead guilty to a felony charge, according to three people briefed on the matter. The bank has sought to pay a lower fine and avoid a guilty plea, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are continuing.
[…]
Negotiations have been delayed at times because of the Covid-19 health crisis, but the people said they expected a resolution by early September of the criminal investigation, which has been led by prosecutors in Brooklyn and with the money laundering and kleptocracy group in Washington.”
Released
As highlighted in this prior post, in December 2018 Chi Ping Patrick was found guilty by a jury of one count of conspiring to violate the FCPA, four counts of violating the FCPA, one count of conspiring to commit international money laundering and one count of committing international money laundering in connection with bribery schemes in Chad and Uganda on behalf of China Energy Fund Committee, an entity funded by CEFC China Energy Company Ltd.
In March 2019, Ho was sentenced (see here).
According to this article, Ho was recently released from a New York jail and arrived in Hong Kong earlier this week.
