The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has created a task force to identify steps Congress should take to counter Western Hemisphere cartels involved in drug, human and arms trafficking, the committee announced April 11. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, will chair the task force. Crenshaw introduced a resolution last month to create a House select committee focused on Mexican drug cartels (see 2503310014).
Property management companies, real estate agents and other firms in the property services industry are underreporting suspected sanctions violations to the U.K. government, a U.K. sanctions agency said last week. The country’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said it suspects those firms are illegally helping sanctioned Russians buy or sell property, adding that Russians are likely being aided by small-scale property service firms or “sole practitioners with high-risk appetites” and long-standing relationships with sanctioned people.
A British court last week sentenced two Russians, including one former senior trade official, to prison for violating U.K. sanctions against Russia. The case marks the first conviction in the U.K. for a breach of sanctions under its Russia Sanctions Regulations, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
John Hurley, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial crimes (see 2502120058), said April 10 that he wants to "understand better how we can tighten the focus” on Chinese companies that steal U.S. innovations.
Matt Borman, who left the government earlier this year after more than two decades at the Bureau of Industry and Security (see 2502240003), has joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a non-resident senior technical expert. CSIS said Borman will "lead the technical expertise of" the think tank's Economic Security and Technology Department. Borman was most recently the BIS principal deputy assistant secretary for export administration.
The EU announced on April 10 that it has placed its planned counter-tariffs on hold for 90 days following President Donald Trump's April 9 decision to withdraw his reciprocal tariffs on most countries (see 2504090069).
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations expressed concern over U.S. tariff policy but said it wants to pursue diplomacy and not "impose any retaliatory measures."
The State Department approved a possible $1.04 billion military sale to Australia, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said this week. The sale includes "AIM-120C and AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles" and related equipment. The principal contractor will be RTX Corp.
In an April 9 memorandum, President Donald Trump instructed all "executive departments and agencies" to "identify certain categories of unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations within 60 days" and establish plans to repeal them. The memo told the agencies to review their regulations for compliance with 10 recent Supreme Court decisions, the first of which is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the decision eliminating the concept of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., tried unsuccessfully April 9 to persuade the Senate to take up and pass a bill that would give China’s ByteDance about six more months to comply with a law requiring the company to divest TikTok.