It may only be a matter of time before countries create a trade payment system to avoid U.S. sanctions, said David Mortlock, a trade lawyer and senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.
The Treasury Department said the founder of a laser technology company headquartered in Massachusetts should not have been included in a 2018 report to Congress that was aimed at informing sanctions decisions, according to a Sept. 11 letter from Treasury. Valentin Gapontsev, founder of IPG Photonics, was listed as a Russian oligarch in a report that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was required to submit to Congress as part of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. The report contained a list of Russian oligarchs and officials that had the potential of facing U.S. sanctions. Gapontsev was born in Moscow, and founded IPG in 1990 in Russia; with a slight name change, IPG Photonics established headquarters in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1998, according to information found online.
The State Department sanctioned two Russian officials for human rights violations, the agency said in a Sept. 10 press release. The officials, Vladimir Petrovich Yermolayev, the head of the Investigative Committee in Surgut, Russia, and Stepan Vladimirovich Tkach, a senior investigator for the committee, were involved in the torture of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the city, the press release said.
The United Kingdom’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation updated its guide of the country’s consolidated list of asset freeze targets, the U.K. said in an Aug. 30 notice. The list also includes “persons subject to restrictive measures in view of Russia's actions” in Ukraine, the U.K. said. The list includes a new search function that will allow users to “quickly and easily” search the targets based on any identifying information, according to a post from Baker McKenzie.
ExxonMobil is requesting that a court vacate a $2 million penalty imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for doing business with Rosneft, a Russian oil company, according to a brief filed Aug. 26 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The United Kingdom's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on Aug. 21 updated its guidance on the country’s current financial sanctions targets. The guidance includes a list of the country’s asset freeze targets, a guide explaining availability in four different formats of its list of financial sanctions targets, and a list of people subject to sanctions and other restrictive measures due to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The Congressional Research Service released an Aug. 14 report on U.S. sanctions against Russia, including details about the first and second round of sanctions under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act. The report details the sanctions’ targets, purposes and how they can be lifted or waived.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Aug. 5-9 in case they were missed.
The U.S.’s second round of Russian sanctions are expected to have a “minimal” impact, according to a post by Norton Rose Fulbright.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security made several changes to its Entity List, adding, removing and modifying entries for companies in China, Canada, Malaysia, Russia, The United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and more. The changes add 17 entities to the list, modify 23 existing entries for China, Hong Kong and Russia, and remove three entities located in China and the UAE, BIS said in a notice. The changes take effect Aug. 14.