Category: News Feeds

Zimbabwean authorities are demanding the country’s biggest mobile money platform to give up half of all transaction files for 2020 to law enforcement agents under a crackdown the operator says violates telecom user data privacy rights. It comes as the beleaguered government clamps down on anti-government economic protests and the media, including the arrest of a well-known anti-corruption journalist.

The EcoCash platform, with 7 million active users as at the end of March this year, is the most used mobile money service in Zimbabwe but the government now alleges EcoCash has been complicit in money laundering activities which resulted in foreign currency mopped up from the streets through agents and bulk payer lines being externalized from Zimbabwe.

On Friday (July 17) , police agents descended on the company’s head office in Harare armed with a search and seize warrant to confiscate data files containing subscriber and transaction details for the period January to June 2020. This has raised concerns over data privacy and protection of subscriber details as well as transaction information that is now in the hands of police and could be publicly used as evidence against EcoCash in court.

The government has been at odds with the EcoCash for several months as its currency crisis and economic woes have spiraled out of its control. Last month Zimbabwe’s central bank slammed EcoCash for running, what it called, a Ponzi scheme.

EcoCash, which has been a solution to the country’s cash shortages for a long time, is alleged by the government to be fueling street market foreign currency rates. The authories says these functionalities were being abused by street currency dealers who were covertly abusing overdrafts and airtime credit facilities to devalue the Zimbabwe dollar.

“Full subscriber details of each user means they have your name, cellphone number, address and all EcoCash records. This is a far reaching breach of privacy.”

The July 17 raid has forced Econet, the mobile operator which holds the EcoCash subscribers, to challenge the government’s search and seize warrant in Harare courts, where it has argued that the warrant be set aside. In a country where people are sensitive about private information falling into the wrong hands, ordinary Zimbabweans, opposition activists and data privacy campaigners are against the latest move by the government and the Harare High Court now has to determine on government having access to such personal data.  Econet argued in its court filing on Monday that the directive by the government for it to hand over sensitive subscriber and transaction data was “unlawful” and constituted “a violation of the applicant’s right to privacy and also the right of privacy” of its subscribers.

“Full subscriber details of each user means they have your name, cellphone number, address and all EcoCash records. This is a far-reaching breach of privacy. Imagine what Zimbabwe police can do in this authoritarian environment with such extensive data,” says Fadzai Mahere, law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and spokeswoman for the main opposition MDC Alliance party.

The political temperatures are boiling over in Zimbabwe ahead of opposition backed anti-government protests scheduled for July 31. The pressure around this has seen Zimbabwean authorities arrest the lead organizer of the protests, Jacob Ngarivhume and prominent journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono who is also an anti-corruption whistleblower on social media. Zimbabwean police said the two had been arrested for “incitement to participate in public violence”.

Even as health workers protested this month on over economic hardship during coronavirus, Mnangagwa’s administration says any future protests and demonstrations should be put on hold as coronavirus cases have been spiking, with local infections also rising and bringing total number of infected to nearly 2000 amid more than 25 deaths.

“The arrests of Chin’ono and Ngarivhume are designed to intimidate and send sending a chilling message to journalists, whistleblowers and activists who draw attention to matters of public interest in Zimbabwe,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International director for East and Southern Africa.

Post published in: Featured

I address you once again to share and give an update on where our Nation stands in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Worldwide, confirmed Coronavirus infections continue to increase, with over 600,000 lives lost to date. Global recoveries from the virus stand at slightly over 8,1 million, up from over 6,8million recorded up to last week.

On our African continent, cases of infections are rising at an alarming pace. By yesterday, Africa had recorded over 721,000 cases, up from 443,412 recorded cases from the previous week. More than 15,100 deaths have been reported so far, with recoveries at 380,253 cases.

Our country, as of this morning, had recorded 1,713 cases, up from 985 cases recorded by last week. This means the number of positive cases increased by over 600 in just one week. During the same period, the number of deaths rose from 18 to 26. Meanwhile, recoveries rose from 328 to 472 in the same week. However, for the first time local transmissions now exceed imported cases, the former standing at 872, and the latter at 841. Another worrisome development is that more and more, cases of local transmissions are being reported at places of work. Covid-19 is thus no longer a problem out there, far and beyond our borders; rather, it is now here amongst us and in our communities.

South Africa, which is both our neighbour and our major trading partner, ranks fifth globally on number of infections, after the United States of America, Brazil, India and Russia. The affinities and intense, multi-layered interactions between our two countries mean we have a very serious situation on our doorstep. This is coupled with an upsurge recorded in all our other neighbouring states.

Therefore, this sobering reality means that we can no longer be complacent, and that requires urgent and decisive measures.

Fellow Zimbabweans,

These urgent and necessary measures will entail curtailing the freedoms we have always enjoyed, and had grown accustomed to. From now on, these freedoms stand suspended and deferred, in the interest of all of us; indeed in the interest of our children and our Nation which must survive, thrive and prosper beyond this pandemic. No responsible Government places its citizens in harm’s way, hence my Government will do all it can to preserve and protect THE RIGHT TO LIFE.

Accordingly, Government has decided on the following measures which take full effect from tomorrow, Wednesday 22 July 2020, until further review and notice:

1–All non-working sections of our population will be required to stay at home; except for purposes of securing food, water and health services.

Where travel and social contact becomes essential and inevitable, every Zimbabwean should and must uphold the four requirements set out by the World Health Organization, W.H.O., which are:

a–Wearing masks or equivalent protective materials;
b–Observing strict standards of hygiene, including the washing of hands or use of sanitizers;
c–Mandatory screening in all public places and buildings;
d–Social distancing in all public places and at all times;

2–With effect from tomorrow Wednesday 22 July 2020, all business premises must operate from 0800HRS until 1500HRS, with the exception of providers of essential services.

3–As of tomorrow Wednesday 22 July 2020, all our Security Services must enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew set to come into force daily between 1800HRS and 0600HRS. Only essential services are exempt from this curfew.

4–All business operations and premises are required to observe and enforce World Health organisation anti-Covid-19 standards which include observing social distance at workplaces, wearing of masks at all times, regular screenings and strict hygienic standards at workplaces;

5–Only registered SMES which have been allocated workspaces will be allowed to operate, and must comply with the parameters and protocols set by the World Health Organisation.

6–Our food markets will remain open and operational, and must observe set measures, rules and requirements meant to uphold public health. Suppliers to markets should be facilitated to reach the markets, including by our Security Forces;

7–Inter-city/town public transport and inessential transport to all rural areas remain banned.

8–All approved buses and vehicles for public transport should ensure and enforce public health standards, including the screening of passengers before boarding, and the disinfecting of all public vehicles after each round trip;

9–Public gatherings for social, religious or political purposes remain banned. Funeral gatherings remain curtailed, in line with public health requirements.

10–Desertion from places of quarantine by returnees and infected persons, resulting in the exposure of innocent lives to the virus will be considered a criminal act and invite very robust response from our law and public health-enforcement arms.

11–Anyone who knowingly exposes, aids, abets, or infects innocent persons, whether by breaching conditions of isolation or by encouraging actions which undermine public health measures which Government has announced or undertaken, will be liable, and severely punished accordingly.

My Fellow Zimbabweans,

These measures are being taken for our collective safety. As Zimbabweans, we have to win the war against the Covid-19 pandemic. We must minimize loss of lives. I, as your President, will come back to you to announce the easing of these public health measures, once the situation has improved. Let all of us, for now, unreservedly comply with these measures.

Together in unity, love and a shared sense of responsibility, we shall overcome and save ourselves, our families and our Nation.

God bless Zimbabwe.
I thank you.

________
Stay Safe – Stay Home – Covid-19 Kills

Post published in: Featured

Econet Wireless released the following statement:

NOTICE TO CUSTOMERS

Dear Valued Customer,

We regret to announce that some of our staff members tested positive to COVID-19 and are now quarantined. Strict measures around contact-tracing and testing have been taken on these cases as guided by the Ministry of Health and Child Care.
There has been a spike in COVID-19 cases across the country in recent days and as an organisation, we place our priority in the safety of our staff, customers and the public at large.

We therefore wish to inform you that all Econet Shops will be temporarily closed, effective Wednesday, July 22, 2020 until further notice. In the interim, we will disinfect and sanitise all our shops to make them safe for our staff and customers upon re-opening at a date to be announced.
We urge our customers to use the following alternative digital channels to access our services during this period:
• Toll-Free Number: 111 • WhatsApp: 0771222904 – 905 • Facebook: @econetzimbabwel @elevateyouthzw, @econetconnectedlifestyle • Twitter: @econet support, @econetzimabwe, @elevateyouthzw • Email: [email protected] or [email protected] • Skype: Econet Customer Care
As we continue the fight this pandemic, we encourage our customers, stakeholders and the nation to keep taking the necessary precautions in preventing the spread of the disease. These include washing hands regularly for at least 20 seconds, wearing a face mask, covering your mouth when coughing, maintaining social distance and self-isolation for those who suspect they are infected by the disease.
We thank you for your continued support, cooperation and patience during these challenging and uncertain times. COVID-19 is real.

Please stay safe and #MaskUpZimbabwe! Econet Wireless
Inspired to change your world

Bonanno. Colombo. Gambino. Genovese. Lucchese. The names of these five Italian “families” will forever be ingrained in the minds of those familiar with the New York City Mafia, a criminal enterprise that had controlled key industries within the city since the days of Prohibition. Chertoff, Savarese, and Childers are names that aren’t as easily recognizable, but perhaps they should be, because they’re the prosecutors who successfully brought down the mob using the then arcane Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia, Netflix’s new three-part documentary, tells the tale of how it happened.

Time and time again, federal authorities investigating the New York Mafia in the 1970s and 1980s found themselves unsatisfied with prosecuting low-level foot soldiers, unable to find a way to make crime stick or even connect it to the bosses in charge. All that changed when the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led at the time by Rudy Giuliani, decided to use RICO to prosecute “the Commission” — a secret sect of the five families’ leaders — as a single criminal organization whose members were all involved in the same conspiracy.

“This was an opportunity to tell a panoramic tale of New York, from the wiseguys on the streets all the way up to the lawmakers in City Hall, at the most dramatic point in its history,” Fear City director Sam Hobkinson tells Above the Law. The series includes previously unheard surveillance recordings and archival material alongside new interviews and reenactments that paint a shocking portrait of the time when New York was under mob rule. “All the agents, prosecutors, and even the mobsters were really proud of what they achieved during this period — they were excited and enthusiastic to discuss it with us, and to go in front of the camera to tell their story.”

With interviews from the agents who played crucial roles in the investigation as well as from Giuliani and Michael Chertoff, John Savarese, and Gil Childers — the three young lawyers who were tasked with handling the Commission trial, lawyers who had never done anything like this before — Fear City provides a fascinating inside look at exactly what it took to put New York’s most notorious crime families out of business.

“Could I have ended up a wiseguy? Sure, I could have, but in the 70s I became a U.S. attorney.” — Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani got much of the publicity from the veritable media circus that the Commission trial created, and the lawyers on the case acknowledged this in the series. “Rudy did rather love being in front of the cameras. Did we tease him a little bit? Sure,” Savarese said. “It was a running joke among all the assistant U.S. attorneys. Being the ‘mob buster’ was a big part of his persona.”

“For me, coming from an Italian-American heritage, the dark side of that immigrant history that the Mafia represents was a horrible stain,” Savarese said in the series. “It was definitely part of my own personal motivation for wanting to work on this case.”

“This clearly was the biggest thing I would ever do professionally. So there was a certain amount of pressure. I had just turned 29. John had also just turned 29. Mike was 30,” Childers said. “I’m sure in some quarters there were people questioning, ‘Really? These three kids are going to try this case?’”

Savarese echoed those thoughts, noting, “None of us had ever tried a case of this magnitude before. When you think about it, it’s a little crazy, right? The United States is entrusting essentially three novices with this momentous case.”

Jury deliberations in the case took a little longer than expected, and everyone started to get nervous about what could be going on behind closed doors — even Giuliani. “I was 100 percent confident when it started,” he said. “By the fifth day, I was less sure of the verdict. If we fail at this, oof, it’ll set us back 30 years.”

As the prosecutors awaited a verdict, Chertoff recalled being told he needed to write two statements for the press, one if there was a conviction and one if there was an acquittal. He remembers saying, “I can’t do that. I’m going to jinx myself.” Childers, anxious about the pending verdict, commented, “You don’t want to screw this up. You don’t want to be the guy who’s known as the person who let the mob bosses off.”

And then a landmark verdict was reached.

“And it was guilty, guilty, guilty. My god, we did it. After all this work, all those sleepless nights, all those ruined weekends, we were finally getting what we had fought for.” — John Savarese

The Commission trial led to eight convictions of top mob figures, including the bosses of three families (Anthony Salerno of the Genovese family, Antonio Corallo of the Lucchese family, and Carmine Persico of the Colombo family). Gambino family boss Paul Castellano was murdered before he could face justice through the court system.

Chertoff was confirmed to the Third Circuit in 2003, before leaving the bench in 2005 to become the Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. He is currently senior of counsel at Covington & Burling. Savarese joined Wachtell Lipton after his stint at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he’s worked for 25 years as a partner in the firm’s litigation department. Childers worked in the Southern District for about a decade, and then joined Orrick as counsel. Since 2000, he’s worked as associate general counsel at Goldman Sachs. Giuliani went on to become the mayor of New York City, and currently has a role as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

Executive producer Jon Liebman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brillstein Entertainment, is a graduate of Yale Law School who clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand (S.D.N.Y.) and later worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District before being appointed as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. “I was fortunate to work with incredible people, including some of the prosecutors in the case,” Liebman told Above the Law. “Gil Childers and John Savarese were colleagues of mine at the time. Some of the cases I got involved in were a number of organized crime “clean up” cases after the Commission case.” He continued:

What interested me was to be able to tell the inside story of how a complex criminal prosecution like this gets put together. The intensity of it, the bravery of it, the challenges of it, and ultimately the architecture of it, so that people could see how these cases and trials are built. What I wanted people to see is the pressure that the FBI agents and the prosecutors endured as they mounted this investigation and this case.

What fascinated me when I was a young lawyer is understanding how the house gets built and what people go through in in building these kind of complex cases. It was great to be able to participate in helping get that across. 

The Mafia’s stranglehold on New York City significantly dissipated after the Commission trial, but it wasn’t completely wiped out. John Gotti, the mobster who ordered Castellano’s killing, is seen at the end of the third episode of the series, and his subsequent reign and conviction would make for a wonderful sequel.

“When you see the outcome of a trial, sometimes it looks easy. And, of course, the job of the prosecutors is to make it look a little bit easy,” Liebman said. “But as you can see from Fear City, constructing this case and mounting it was not easy at all.”

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Among the many services provided by Fix the Court is the annual recusal report that digs into Supreme Court recusals to figure out what’s caused the justices to sit out big cases throughout the year. Or, more troublingly, what cases they didn’t sit out that they absolutely should have.

Before getting rolling on this though, this is a good time to remind everyone that this project that Fix the Court undertakes every year doesn’t have to be the guessing game that it is:

Three leading U.S. House members introduced a bill in February that would require the court to “publish timely notice of [a justice’s] disqualification on the website of the court, with a brief explanation of each reason for the disqualification.” But until recusal explanations are signed into law, we’ll try to let you know why the 140-240 annual SCOTUS step-asides are occurring.

So hopefully we’ll one day have an official report.

The good news in this report is that, unlike in the past, Fix the Court couldn’t find any instances where a justice failed to recuse themselves when they clearly should have. The one quasi-exception to this was Justice Sotomayor’s participation in the faithless elector case Secretary of State v. Baca through the cert stage where her friend, Polly Baca, was a named party. Though interestingly, Polly Baca wasn’t the Baca of the caption, which was Michael Baca. In any event, Justice Sotomayor formally recused herself before the merits stage, but this is the closest Fix the Court estimates we came to a clearly missed recusal, which is pretty good.

One gray area case involved a lawsuit against Penguin Random House. Breyer recused himself for owning stock in a company founded by his wife’s family that used to own Penguin. Sotomayor and Gorsuch did not recuse themselves even though both published their books through the publisher and receive royalties. It’s a less clear-cut question for the two justices because their contractual relationship with the company doesn’t give them a direct financial stake by any means, but Fix the Court’s position is that receiving significant payouts from a single source should warrant recusal.

Another iffy conflict arose from a Tenth Circuit death penalty appeal that Justice Gorsuch dutifully sat out based on his old job. But the appeal was eventually resolved based on the result of McGirt v. Oklahoma, which Gorsuch wrote. So, indirectly, he did participate in the case. That may be a bit of 3D Recusal Chess — in this specific instance it would be a bit extreme for Gorsuch to never address these issues because it might implicate another former matter — but it’s a circumstance the justices should be mindful of since the whole point of this exercise is to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety.

Beyond that everything mostly went as expected. Justices sat out cases involving stock ownership, their own prior work, and relationships with named institutions named. Breyer continues to recuse from cases coming from his brother’s courtroom. The report flags future Facebook litigation as an area to watch because one of Kavanaugh’s bros is Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy. And if you have any idea why Breyer recused in Erin Capron et al., v. Massachusetts Attorney General, let Fix the Court know because that’s the only recusal they can’t pin down.

Check out the full report.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

A few weeks ago, I published an article about why The Paper Chase television series should be on every lawyer’s quarantine watch list.  The piece got a lot of positive feedback, so I started to think about other television shows people in the legal industry should watch, and Better Call Saul immediately came to mind.  As many people already know, Better Call Saul is a spinoff of the extremely popular television series Breaking Bad. Although Better Call Saul includes many characters from Breaking Bad, it focuses on the character of criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (also known as Jimmy McGill, but I’ll just stick to calling him Saul). Although the show has a ton of amazing qualities, one aspect that lawyers will truly appreciate about the series is that it is probably the most accurate legal show on television.

Don’t get me wrong, when the show depicts Saul Goodman conducting highly unethical or criminal behavior, this does not accurately reflect the lives of most lawyers. In addition, Better Call Saul often has to be flexible with how it depicts the legal profession for entertainment value and to fit story lines into a concise time slot. However, the way that the show depicts the legal profession is usually very accurate. In addition, the conversations, scenarios, and procedures shown in the series will be very familiar to many lawyers and others within the legal industry.

For instance, the show regularly depicts the wheeling and dealing that occurs between attorneys in courthouses and beyond. Indeed, the show regularly shows montages of Saul chasing down adversaries in court, making deals, and pleading for better offers on behalf of his clients. Although I don’t practice criminal law, these scenes depicted in the show are very similar to what I witnessed while interning for a criminal judge.

In addition, even attorneys who focus on civil matters will be able to relate to these experiences in the show. For all the New York City attorneys out there, the depictions are really reminiscent of what was experienced in Brooklyn JCP or CCP before the pandemic on a regular basis. In these parts and others, I and other attorneys would conference matters in the hallways in a free-wheeling manner, and hunt down adversaries to conduct negotiations about cases all the time. In addition, the way that Better Call Saul depicts the fluorescent lighting and other aspects of courthouses is extremely convincing. Indeed, I can almost smell the lemon-scented cleaner used by most government buildings when I look at the depictions! Furthermore, Better Call Saul often accurately shows timeframes related to litigation and other matters depicted in the show. Many people criticize Law and Order and similar series for seemingly showing that cases come to trial at lighting speed to make everything wrap up neatly in one episode. Not Better Call Saul. In fact, a class action that was initiated in BCS during the first season still hasn’t been disposed of several seasons later, and this is very accurate considering how litigation drags.

Furthermore, although Better Call Saul exaggerates some topics for entertainment value, the story lines are still usually accurate and believable.  For instance, most lawyers are familiar with spoliation, a doctrine which holds that if a party intentionally or negligently destroys relevant evidence after knowing about a claim, they can be sanctioned. I am a huge practitioner of spoliation motions, and I try to make a spoliation argument in most of the lawsuits I handle.

In any case, spoliation plays a huge roll in Better Call Saul when Saul visits a nursing home that he is planning on suing. During the visit, Saul hears and sees that employees are shredding documents, and he immediately asks to use the bathroom. Then, Saul writes out a quick spoliation letter (partially on toilet paper) notifying the establishment that they have a duty to preserve documents and must stop the shredding or face consequences. This is a brilliant move to put the potential defendant on notice of a possible claim and inform them that destruction of documents may constitute spoliation. Any good lawyer would have done exactly what Saul did, and this scene made for some good entertainment.

It’s hard to relate all of the instances in which the show accurately depicts the practice of law. However, the understanding of firm life — including the monotony of doc review and the struggles of solo practice — are pretty accurate. In addition, many conversations between characters are replete with discussions of actual legal concepts like Rule 11 and summary judgment, and all of the references seem correct. The only slip up I ever noticed was when Saul tells someone to “Shephardize” cases in Westlaw when Westlaw has Keycite, but hey, Saul could have been using the term in a generic sense!  Of course, Saul’s alma mater (University of American Samoa Law School, go Land Crabs!) is fake, but I have to say that I love how Saul’s older brother (who is depicted as an esteemed lawyer) is said to have attended Georgetown Law, my alma mater!

In the end, accuracy is not necessarily important for viewers to enjoy legal drama. Indeed, I loved watching the show Goliath on Amazon Prime, even though the series is almost laughably inaccurate about the legal profession.  However, lawyers might appreciate how Better Call Saul has accurate depictions of the legal profession, and this is one more reason to watch this award-winning show. Also, as a shameless plug, if anyone ever wants advice on how to make legal films or television series more accurate, feel free to give me a shout! As Better Call Saul demonstrates, entertainment value does not always need to suffer from accurately depicting legal procedures and concepts.

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Last week, we discussed an arbitration panel’s blistering ruling that Bridgewater Associates, as part of a bad-faith attempt to destroy a couple of former employees’ new hedge fund, backed up its allegations of theft of trade secrets and violations of all sorts of agreements with evidence made up, or not submitted. At the time, we hadn’t actually seen the arbitrators’ report, since it wouldn’t be publicly filed for another two days, but we knew enough—specifically, the above and that Bridgewater had been ordered to pay its ex-charges’ legal fees—to know it was bad. Worse than losing a fifth of your clients’ money and allegedly trying to stiff your former co-CEO because she’s a woman combined.

* If you have an older iPhone, you may be entitled to $25, since Apple is accused of intentionally slowing down the performance of outdated phones without notifying customers. Just don’t spend your $25 all in one place… [NBC News]

* Counsel for Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell are asking for a gag order over attorneys involved with her criminal case. [Seattle Times]

* Several Fox News hosts are accused of sexual misconduct in a new lawsuit. [Vulture]

* Authorities are investigating whether the anti-feminist lawyer accused of killing the son of federal judge Esther Salas was also involved in the killing of a mens’ rights lawyer in California earlier this month. [AP]

* Burger King has successfully moved to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that the fast food chain deceived customers into thinking it used different cooking surfaces for its vegan offerings. If they claimed the food was kosher, there might have been a different result… [Reuters]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.