Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Aug. 24-28 in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Two House members said there is bipartisan support for increased sanctions against Belarus, urging the U.S. to quickly designate Belarusian officials for the unfair elections held earlier this month. But despite the consensus, the U.S. has been too slow to impose designations, experts said. “They're doing too little, and they're moving too slowly,” Michael Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former foreign policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said during an Aug. 27 event hosted by the think tank. “The West needs to demonstrate to all those mid-ranking people in the [government] that if you engage in repression, you're going to be sanctioned.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security added 60 entities to the Entity List, including 24 entities for helping the Chinese military build artificial islands in the South China Sea. BIS also designated entities in France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates for a range of activities, including illegal exports to Iran, submitting false information to BIS, contributing to Russian biological weapons programs and more. BIS also revised five existing entries under Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran and the UAE.
Curtiss-Wright, a U.S. manufacturer, may have violated U.S. sanctions on Russia when it continued to do business with two customers after they were acquired by a sanctioned entity, the company said in an Aug. 19 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The company said the two customers, “unbeknown” to Curtiss-Wright, were acquired in 2019 by an entity subject to OFAC’s Ukraine-related sanctions. “Change of ownership resulted in beneficial ownership sanctions now capturing our two long-time customers,” the company said.
Russia recently introduced a bill to revise regulations for its sanctions regimes and its countermeasures against U.S. sanctions, an Aug. 21 EU Sanctions blog post said. Among other changes, the bill would expand the scope of sanctions to apply to entities owned or controlled 25% or more by a sanctioned person or entity. The bill would also impose reporting requirements for financial institutions on measures they are taking to implement sanctions, and create a new penalty that would suspend or revoke a financial institution's license “in the event of repeated sanctions violations,” the post said.
The United Nations Security Council on Aug. 14 rejected a U.S. resolution to extend the Iranian arms embargo, raising the possibility of the U.S. invoking snapback sanctions under the Iran nuclear deal. Only the U.S. and the Dominican Republic voted in favor. Russia and China voted against; 11 members abstained, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom. All three previously said they would support an extension of the arms embargo (see 2006220020), which is scheduled to expire in October.
European countries need to increase sanctions against Venezuela to force a regime change and limit Nicolas Maduro’s ability to evade U.S. restrictions, said Carrie Filipetti, the State Department’s assistant secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. Filipetti also said more U.S.-European cooperation can help limit the Maduro regime’s access to gold supply chains, which it uses for funding.
Three Republican senators threatened U.S. sanctions against a German port for helping to build Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline (see 2007150021), urging the port to stop providing “goods, services and support” for the project.” In an Aug. 5 letter to Fahrhafen Sassnitz GmbH, operator of Mukran Port, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the port should immediately stop supporting the Russian-flagged vessels Fortuna and Akademik Cherskiy.
Democratic and Republican senators called on the State Department to do more to pressure the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela, saying the U.S.’s approach, which they called ineffective, should include more multilateral support and stronger sanctions against Maduro’s allies. Several senators said they would back legislation to grant the administration more sanctions powers.
The United Kingdom on July 31 imposed sanctions against six people and three entities responsible for cyberattacks. The designations mirror the European Union's July 30 measures against North Korean, Chinese and Russian cyberattackers (see 2007310007). The U.K. recently issued details for its post-Brexit cyber sanctions regime (see 2006220018).