The Council of the European Union on July 22 renewed its sanctions regime on Russia for another six months, extending the restrictions until Jan. 31. The regime includes a range of individual, sectoral, trade, financial and servicing restrictions.
After U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan last week said the Biden administration is preparing new sanctions against Chinese entities, including possibly financial institutions, for supporting Russia's military, China said it “firmly rejects all kinds of illicit unilateral sanctions” that the U.S. may be considering.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control plans to extend its sanctions-related recordkeeping requirements to match a similar expansion of the U.S. statute of limitations for sanctions violations that was signed into law earlier this year (see 2404290071).
The Federal Maritime Commission this week released its final rule on unreasonable carrier conduct, the last step in the FMC’s nearly two-year campaign of crafting regulations to address ocean carriers that unfairly refuse vessel or cargo space to shippers.
Samuel Cutler, a former sanctions and export control lawyer with Miller & Chevalier, joined the Office of Foreign Assets Control as an enforcement officer, he announced last week on LinkedIn. Cutler said he began the new role this month.
An administrative law judge on July 18 upheld a March determination by the Federal Maritime Commission that the ocean transportation intermediary (OTI) license of Miami freight forwarder Netcycle Trading should be revoked and that the company should stop its OTI activities.
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision upending the Chevron principle of deferring to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes requires a more demanding review of the Office of Foreign Assets Control's use of the Global Magnitsky Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act, sanctioned Mir Rahman Rahmani and his son, Hafi Ajmal Rahmani, argued (Mir Rahman Rahmani v. Janet Yellen, D.D.C. # 24-00285).
Congress should get on with passing long-standing legislation on China sanctions and outbound investment, two Republican senators said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week.
People and companies that tried to meet their sanctions reporting requirements to the U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation last week may have experienced issues due to the technology outage faced by businesses around the world July 19, OFSI said in a notice. The outage, caused by an issue with Microsoft's third-party information technology vendor CrowdStrike, "may be impacting upon firms’ ability to fulfill their reporting obligations to OFSI, or meet other deadlines to supply us with information," the agency said. If a reporting company missed a deadline because of the outage, they should "include the reason for the delay in your e-mail to us. OFSI will take this into account when assessing the submission."
The EU this month updated its set of best practices to help member states better implement sanctions. The 42-page guidance, issued by the Council of the European Union, outlines how new designations should be applied, how governments should approach delisting, the roles of companies and other “economic operators,” areas and procedures for coordinating sanctions with other agencies and countries, and more.