The U.K. made several changes to its sanctions list this week for entries involving Russia and Belarus.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week finalized a rule to extend the agency’s sanctions-related recordkeeping requirements from five years to 10 years, aligning those rules with a similar expansion of the statute of limitations for civil and criminal violations of U.S. sanctions (see 2407220022 and 2404290071). The changes, outlined in an interim final rule published in September (see 2409110017), take effect March 21.

The U.S. government’s recently revised policy guidance for missile technology exports gives the Bureau of Industry and Security more flexibility to approve export licenses to support space launch vehicle (SLV) programs, a Commerce Department official said March 19.

The Bureau of Industry and Security is hoping to publish new guidance to clarify due diligence expectations for companies subject to the agency’s recent semiconductor-related export control rules, Commerce Department officials said this week. They also said the agency is hoping to expand its list of approved designers that will benefit from some licensing carve-outs for certain chip exports.

Paul Newman, former chief of the Census Bureau's Trade Data Collection Branch, recently retired from government, a Commerce Department official said during an annual Bureau of Industry and Security conference this week.

A Federal Maritime Commission administrative law judge on March 13 ordered Florida-based ocean carrier Crowley Logistics to pay Ian Mills $8,500 plus interest as reparation for a clip-on generator that went missing in late 2021 and was never found.

Imports into the EU of birch and other types of plywood have proven to be a “major source of revenue” for Russia and Belarus and are frequently being used to evade EU sanctions, the European Commission said in a sanctions alert last week.

The Council of the European Union on March 17 added nine people and one entity to its Democratic Republic of the Congo sanctions list for committing "serious human rights violations and abuses" through the sustenance of the "armed conflict, instability and insecurity" in the DRC.

The State Department released its Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act annual report for 2024, detailing actions it took to impose Magnitsky sanctions last year, including 70 foreign person designations. Those designations represent "the most geographically expansive set of designations to date," the agency said, targeting more than 19 countries from "nearly every major geographic region." The report lists each of the designations and why they were designated.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Jumilca Sandivel Hernandez Perez, a “key leader” of a Guatemala-based criminal group that it said has smuggled thousands of migrants from Guatemala through Mexico and into the U.S. OFAC said Hernandez Perez leads the “Lopez Human Smuggling Organization,” which was previously sanctioned in July (see 2407250042).