String of Indictments by DOJ Point to Multiple Global Operations
Task force at the center, once headed by Bruce Ohr, now directed by Deputy AG Rosenstein
The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces program was established in 1982 as a means to combat increasingly organized drug traffickers.
The OCDETF program is an unusually broad coalition that, as noted by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, “brings together just about every federal law enforcement agency there is. It’s the Swiss Army knife of law enforcement.”
On Oct. 15, 2018, Sessions broadened OCDETF’s mandate, and in doing so, designated five different groups as the nation’s top transnational organized-crime threats (notably, Hezbollah made the list).
The following streams of indictments, although seemingly unrelated, are linked through commonalities in the borderless drug trade and money-laundering operations.
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Sessions had, to this point, been the man directing the OCDETF’s efforts. Concurrent with his Oct. 15th announcement, Sessions appointed Rosenstein to lead the new transnational task force and direct OCDETF’s actions. Working underneath Rosenstein are separate subcommittees for each of the target groups, each led by an experienced prosecutor.
Targeting Mexican Drug Cartels
-Immediately following Sessions’s October press conference, 15 indictments, along with new measures aimed at destroying the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, were unveiled Oct. 16, 2018.
-On Oct. 31, 2018, a “former executive director at the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), pleaded guilty for his role in a billion-dollar international scheme to launder funds embezzled from PDVSA.”
Other Key Investigations
-On Dec. 4, 2018, U.S. prosecutors announced criminal charges against four people, including a former lawyer for Mossack Fonseca, the firm highlighted by the leak of the Panama Papers.
-German authorities had raided the offices of Deutsche Bank in an investigation related to the leaks of the Panama papers.
-On Dec. 5, 2018, The Associated Press reported that prosecutors were ramping up their investigation of the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs. Both firms were accused of FARA violations resulting from the special counsel’s probe into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
-Also on Dec. 5, 2018, it was announced that Wanzhou Meng, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has been arrested in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities on suspicions that she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran. Meng was reportedly arrested on Dec. 1, 2018, but the arrest wasn’t made public immediately.
-Jan. 4, the DOJ handed down a significant indictment on the former Attorney General for the state of Nayarit, Mexico, Edgar Veytia.
-Meanwhile, the trial of infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán continues—and as it does, the level of complicity throughout the entirety of the Mexican government, as well as elements within the U.S. government, is gradually being revealed. “He told the jurors stories not only about the drug lord’s operations in Mexico, Honduras, and Belize, but also about his suppliers, distributors, bodyguards, assassins, cousins, brothers, and sons.
“He also said that his father routinely bribed a military officer who once served as a personal guard to Mexico’s former president, Vicente Fox.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/string-of-indictments-by-doj-point-to-multiple-global-operations_2758670.html