The State Department approved a potential military sale to Chile worth about $635 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said July 23. The sale includes equipment and services to modernize Chile’s F-16s, including “joint helmet-mounted cueing systems,” “general purpose bomb bodies” and radios, the notice said. The principal contractor is Lockheed Martin.
The Department of Justice issued a forfeiture complaint against four companies that allegedly laundered money on behalf of U.S.-sanctioned North Korean banks, the agency said July 23. The complaint calls for the forfeiture of more than $2 million used to buy goods for the North Korean government, the Justice Department said. The four unnamed companies were part of a money-laundering scheme involving three sanctioned entities: Velmur Management Pte. Ltd, Dandong Zhicheng Metallic Material Co. and multiple branches of North Korea’s Foreign Trade bank. “This complaint illuminates how a global money laundering network coordinates with front companies to move North Korean money through the United States,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin said in a statement. “This case demonstrates that we will use all tools … to target companies that harm U.S. national security, regardless of where they are doing business.”
The Customs chapter in the U.S. Code, Title 19, will be reorganized by subject matter, not chronologically, the Office of Law Revision Counsel recently announced. Title 19 appeared in 1926, and has 30 chapters. “The new Title 19 -- renamed as Customs and International Trade -- will enable general and permanent laws related to customs and international trade to be better organized and maintained," the Office of Law Revision Counsel said on its website. "Using an act-centric organization framework, the structure of the new title reflects the structure of included acts where possible.”
The United Kingdom’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on July 23 revised an entry under its ISIL (Da’esh) and al-Qaida sanctions regime. The entry is for Noor Wali Mehsud, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan leader sanctioned by the U.K. July 16 (see 2007170017). Mehsud remains subject to an asset freeze.
Forty-three countries accused North Korea of violating a United Nations cap on refined petroleum imports and asked the U.N. to end all oil shipments to North Korea until year-end, Reuters reported July 24. The countries -- including the U.S., the United Kingdom and France -- told the U.N. that North Korea used illegal ship-to-ship transfers to import more than 1.6 million barrels of petroleum January through May. The countries asked the U.N. Security Council to issue a determination that North Korea has surpassed its annual cap of 500,000 barrels and to “inform member states that they must immediately cease selling, supplying, or transferring refined petroleum products to [North Korea] for the remainder of the year,” the report said.
The U.S. and the European Union should be able to “come to a convergence” on seven planks of reform of the appellate body at the World Trade Organization, said Ignacio Garcia Bercero, European Union Visiting Fellow, Oxford University and a chief negotiator at the European Commission. Garcia Bercero, who noted he was not speaking on behalf of the European Commission, was a panelist on a WTO Reform webinar hosted by the Washington International Trade Association July 23.
U.S. lawmakers are seeking ways to fund a bill that would support the U.S. semiconductor industry amid rising technology competition with China. The bill (see 2006110038), which would incentivize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and provide more federal support for research and development, includes provisions for refundable investment tax credits and $10 billion to match state incentives.
The Coalition for a Prosperous America hired Charles Benoit, a trade lawyer who previously worked as outside counsel for the European Commission during negotiations for the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, as trade counsel, the group said in a news release. CPA also hired Kenneth Rapoza, previously a journalist, as an industry analyst, it said.
The World Customs Organization issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
The United Kingdom’s arms embargo against Hong Kong goes beyond crowd control equipment and will cover any item that could be used for “internal repression,” the U.K. said in a July 22 notice. The embargo, announced by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab July 20 (see 2007210042), covers military aircraft, helicopters, weapons platforms, armored vehicles and lethal weapons, such as machine guns, large-caliber weapons, bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles. The U.K. also said the embargo will cover “specially designed components” of those weapons as well as ammunition. The U.K. said it will revise its Hong Kong open general licenses “to bring them in line with restrictions on China.”