The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Nicolas “Nicolasito” Ernesto Maduro Guerra, the son of Nicolas Maduro, for being a government official of the “illegitimate” Venezuelan Maduro regime, Treasury said in a June 28 press release. Treasury said the younger Maduro is a member of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly, which tries to “rewrite the Venezuelan constitution and dissolve Venezuelan state institutions.”
More than 25 industry associations are asking the Commerce Department to allow more time for public comments on Commerce’s next advance notice of proposed rulemaking for foundational technologies, which is expected in the coming weeks. The associations asked for a 90-day comment and review period in a June 27 letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
A Commerce Department official allayed concerns from the U.S. industry that new export controls on emerging technologies will be overbroad, saying it will only look to control a "slice" of categories of technologies, not whole classifications.
Russia renewed a ban on food imports from the U.S., European Union member states and others until Dec. 31, 2020, according to an unofficial translation of a June 24 Russian government notice and a post on the EU Sanctions blog. The ban was originally scheduled to last through Dec. 31, 2019, and also bans food imports from Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Albania, Montenegro, Liechtenstein and Ukraine.
A bipartisan effort to reduce fentanyl trafficking passed the Senate June 27 on the must-pass defense authorization bill. The amendment would dedicate some money for investigations into which Chinese companies are supplying fentanyl to the U.S. black market. It also requires sanctions on drug manufacturers in China that knowingly provide synthetic opioids to dealers, and would sanction financial institutions that assist those manufacturers or international drug cartels. However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's staff could not say by press time how much money would be appropriated.
Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., plans to introduce a bill that would increase export controls on additional goods deemed by China to be “core technologies,” and impose sanctions on foreign entities or people who violate those controls, according to a "dear colleague" letter Green sent June 26 to solicit co-sponsors. The bill, which he calls the China Technology Transfer Control Act, would “stop the Chinese military’s acquisition of sensitive American technology,” the letter said. “We should not continue to let China steal American property, only for them to turn around and use it to undermine our national security.”
The United Nations Security Council removed 17 entities from its Iraq sanctions list, the council said in a June 24 press release. The entities are no longer subject to asset freezes. The council did not give reasons for the removals in its press release.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two Venezuelan government officials for fraud and corruption, Treasury said in a June 27 press release. OFAC is sanctioning Luis Alfredo Motta Dominguez, former minister of Electric Power and former president of the National Electric Corporation (CORPOELEC), and Eustiquio Jose Lugo Gomez, the deputy minister of Finance, Investments, and Strategic Alliances for the Ministry of Electric Power.
The advent of data privacy laws, such as Europe's General Data Protection Regulation, creates a "potential tension" with trade sanctions compliance, said Ramsey Kazem of Spark Compliance Consulting while at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference on June 27. GDPR and other laws in various stages of implementation in U.S. states "tend to be very protective and restrictive on how you use personal data," he said. This may often conflict with sanctions laws, which require companies to do "more with the personal data that they possess in terms of screening their third-parties, screening their business partners, screening their customers," Kazem said. "So it's not difficult to see how the GDPR" and other data privacy restrictions "could conflict with, for example, U.S. sanctions laws." Further complicating the issue for companies is that "neither the U.S. nor the EU recognize the other's laws as a legitimate basis" for not complying, he said. Companies will therefore need to examine the potential risks created by such a conflict, Kazem said. "In some instances there may not be an easy answer and a company may be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils." As a result, data privacy considerations "must be at the table" while a company is developing a sanctions law compliance program, Kazem said.
Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security is looking to make more use of the enforcement authorities it was granted under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, including more undercover operations, wiretapping and investigations, said Adrienne Frazier, a lawyer for BIS. Speaking on a panel during the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington on June 27, Frazier said BIS previously had the ability to conduct investigations in coordination with federal law enforcement. But ECRA gave BIS more individual authorities and investigative abilities, she said. “I think that those are going to be things the agency looks to do more of. It’s something that I think the agency is keen to do.”