Canada this week announced another set of sanctions against Iran, designating seven senior military officials, government officials and people working for “state-directed” companies. The officials and people have ties to entities that supply materials to Iran’s “repressive” national Law Enforcement Command or work for companies that make “lethal combat drones” used by Iran’s armed forces to “destabilize the region” or that are sent to Russia for its war against Ukraine, Canada said.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week issued new guidance to help companies, financial institutions, nongovernmental organizations and others understand what humanitarian activities are permitted under its Syria sanctions regulations. The seven-page guidance includes frequently asked questions OFAC said it has been receiving, covering topics related to caps on aid, crowdfunding, providing aid to areas controlled by the Syrian government, processing financial transactions, sending money to people in Syria, digital payment platforms, and exporting food, medicine and other goods to the country. It also stresses that OFAC’s authorizations allow transactions only where aid will benefit the Syrian people and not the government.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a final rule replacing its Mali Sanctions Regulations, which the agency had published in “abbreviated form” in 2020. The amended regulations, effective Aug. 7, implement a 2019 executive order that authorized sanctions against people and entities involved in human rights abuses and other sanctionable activities in the country. OFAC said it’s providing “a more comprehensive set of regulations, including additional interpretive and definitional guidance, general licenses, and other regulatory provisions.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control added 2,275 parties to its Specially Designated Nationals List last year, more than double the number it added to the list in 2021, the Center for a New American Security said in its Sanctions by the Numbers blog last week. The think tank said sanctions against Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine accounted for 1,698 of the 2,275 total designations. The remaining 577 additions to the SDN List would have been “comparable” to past years, adding that “significant” changes in the number of designations from one year to the next is “usually due to current events rather than changes in the underlying sanctions policy.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week removed sanctions from Satish Seemar, who was designated in 2020 for being a horse trainer for Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic who has ties to human rights abuses. OFAC also removed the vessel Addiction (9HA4571) from the Specially Designated Nationals List. The Malta-flagged yacht has links to Sergei Nikolaevich Adonev, sanctioned earlier this year for being a financier for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The agency didn’t release more information.

A senior Treasury Department official this week touted what he said has been a successful implementation of the price cap on Russian oil (see 2305190022), saying it has “struck at the heart of the Kremlin’s most important cash cow.” Eight months after the U.S. and allies announced the first cap on Russian crude oil, Russian energy is “trading at a significant discount” to other oil sources, and has significantly limited Moscow’s profits on each barrel, said Eric Van Nostrand, acting assistant secretary for economic policy.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned one government official from Bosnia and Herzegovina and three from the Republika Srpska, one of two entities comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina, for threatening the “stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” of the country. The designations target Nenad Stevandic, speaker and president of the Republika Srpska National Assembly; Radovan Viskovic, prime minister of the Republika Srpska; Zeljka Cvijanovic, a Serb member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina presidency; and Milos Bukejlovic, the Republika Srpska justice minister.

The U.S. this week sanctioned “key leaders” and financial facilitators of the Islamic State group and al-Qaida in Maldives, including 20 operatives and 29 of their companies. The designations also target Maldives-based terrorist-affiliated criminal gangs, including people who have carried out attacks that targeted journalists and local authorities.

The U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on July 28 revised or corrected entries under its Russia, Central African Republic and Mali sanctions regimes. The U.K. amended the entries for Andrey Vladimirovich Sharonov and Eugene Tenenbaum under Russia; corrected the entries for Alexander Alexandrovich Ivanov and Vitalii Viktorovitch Perfilev under the CAR; and corrected the entry for Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov for Mali.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control is launching two short-video series to provide “further clarity” on U.S. sanctions requirements, sanctions programs and “practical suggestions on how to comply effectively,” the agency announced last week. The first video, released July 28, is part of a series to “provide viewers with a high-level introduction on the fundamentals of OFAC and sanctions implementation.” The second video series, which will be released in the coming months, will address specific, frequently asked questions from OFAC’s hotline, including “how to most effectively use OFAC’s Sanctions List Search tool and steps to validate a potential sanctions match.”