Source: https://ricoact.com/?page_id=572
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 10:26:57+00:00

Document:
Significant amounts of conduct in furtherance of the RICO conspiracy occurred in both the United States as well as the Dominican Republic. Indeed, the conduct occurring in, or directed at, the United States in this case was not an insubstantial or preparatory part of the overall looting scheme, but the actual means of its consummation. This scheme was carried out by directing transfers of funds to and from accounts at American banks. . . . We have no doubt that under these circumstances, Congress would intend [the commission] to have recourse to American courts and remedies.
Id. at 1352; see also United States v. Chao Fan Xu, 706 F.3d 965, 979 (9th Cir. 2013) (holding that the defendants could be prosecuted under RICO: “Defendants’ pattern of racketeering activity may have been conceived and planned overseas, but it was executed and perpetuated in the United States. Under Morrison, we look ‘not upon the place where the deception originated,’ but instead upon the connection of the challenged conduct to the proscription in the statute. . . . [W]e conclude that Defendants’ criminal plan, which included violation of United States immigration laws while the Defendants were in the United States, falls within the ambit of the statute]”).
Other circuit courts have, however, adopted a more restrictive rule regarding RICO’s extraterritorial application. In Norex Petroleum Ltd. v. Access Ind., Inc., 631 F.3d 29 (2d Cir. 2010), the plaintiff alleged that the defendants participated in a widespread racketeering and money laundering scheme designed to seize control of the Russian oil industry. The plaintiff also alleged that the defendants committed acts of racketeering in the United States in furtherance of the scheme. Id. at 31. The Second Circuit began by analyzing the Supreme Court’s decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 561 U.S. 247 (2010), which rejected the extraterritorial application of the United States’ securities laws. The Supreme Court stated that “when a statute gives no clear indication of an extraterritorial application, it has none” – regardless of whether the defendants’ conduct or its effect relates to the United States. Id. at 255.
. . . simply alleging that some domestic conduct occurred cannot support a claim of domestic application. “[I]t is a rare case of prohibited extraterritorial application that lacks all contact with the territory of the United States.” [Morrison, 130 S.Ct. at 2884 (emphasis in original).] The slim contacts with the United States alleged by [the plaintiff] are insufficient to support extraterritorial application of the RICO statute. . .
Id. at 33. The Second Circuit further explicitly noted that its reasoning was limited to civil RICO claims brought under section 1964(c) and that it was expressing no opinion with regard to RICO actions brought by the government. Id.
Just when it looked like the circuits could be splitting on the issue of RICO’s extraterritorial application, the Second Circuit softened its approach in European Cmty. v. RJR Nabisco, Inc., 764 F.3d 129 (2d. Cir. 2014), holding that “Congress has clearly communicated its intention that RICO apply to extraterritorial conduct to the extent that extraterritorial violations of those statutes [listed as acts of racketeering] serve as the basis for RICO liability.” Id. at 137.
A violation of § 1962 may be based on a pattern of racketeering that includes predicate offenses committed abroad, provided that each of those offenses violates a predicate statute that is itself extraterritorial.
Nothing in § 1964(c) provides a clear indication that Congress intended to create a private right of action for injuries suffered outside of the United States. The statute provides a cause of action to “[a]ny person injured in his business or property” by a violation of § 1962…. The statute’s reference to injury to “business or property” also does not indicate extraterritorial application. If anything, by cabining RICO’s private cause of action to particular kinds of injury — excluding, for example, personal injuries — Congress signaled that the civil remedy is not coextensive with § 1962’s substantive provisions….
Id. at 2108. The Supreme Court went on to hold that “[s]ection 1964(c) requires a civil RICO plaintiff to allege and prove a domestic injury to business or property and does not allow recovery for foreign injuries.” Id. at 2110. The Supreme Court noted that what constitutes a “domestic injury” will not always be self-evident, leaving the precise definition and application of that phrase to the lower courts.
The Courts of Appeal are beginning to give concrete meaning to RJR Nabisco’s “domestic injury” requirement. In Buscanan v. Elsaca, 874 F.3d 806 (2d Cir. 2017), the Second Circuit held that when a RICO plaintiff alleges separate schemes that harm materially distinct interests to business or property, each injury should be analyzed to determine whether it is a domestic injury. Id. at 814 (noting that the use of bank accounts located in the U.S. to facilitate or conceal a theft of property outside the U.S., without more, is not a domestic injury). The court further stated that with regard to injury or damage to tangible property located in the United States, that injury is a domestic injury even if the plaintiff is a foreign resident. Id. at 824-825. In Armada (Singapore) PTE Ltd. v. Amcol Int’l Corp., 885 F.3d 1090 (7th Cir. 2018), the Seventh Circuit held that with regard to an injury to a plaintiff’s intangible property rights, in this case a judgment, the injury is sustained at the plaintiff’s residence, which is a corporation’s principal place of business. Because the Armada plaintiff’s principal place of business was in Singapore, the plaintiff’s injury to intangible property was not domestic, and its RICO claim was dismissed. Id. at 1095. In Humphrey v. GlaxoSmithKline PLC, 905 F.3d 694 (3d Cir. 2018), the court held that the plaintiff did not suffer a domestic injury because the plaintiff lived in China, had its principal place of business in China, provided services in China, entered the applicable agreement in China (which a Chinese choice of law provision), met with the defendant’s representatives in China, and acknowledged that the claim arose in China on its civil coversheet. Id. at 707-08. The plaintiffs alleged loss of goodwill and prospective customers in the United States did not render its injury domestic for purposes of RICO’s application. Id.

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