The Office of Foreign Assets Control on Dec. 30 deleted a range of entries designated under its counter-narcotics, Cuba and Kingpin Act sanctions. The now-deleted entries are for people and entities located in Colombia, Panama and Mexico. OFAC didn’t immediately provide more information.
The State Department published its fall 2021 regulatory agenda, including a new mention of a final rule that will add and remove certain export controls from the U.S. Munitions List, including some emerging technologies. The rule would revise and exclude some entries on the USML that don’t “warrant inclusion,” the agency said, and also add other entries for certain critical and emerging technologies. The changes include revisions to specific paragraphs in the USML and their corresponding parts in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The rule will also look to “limit the items categorized in USML Category XXI by updating the appropriate USML paragraph,” the agency said. The State Department plans to issue the rule in July.
Switzerland dropped former Congo official Jean-Claude Kazembe Musonda from its sanctions regime, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs said. Musonda was the former governor of Haut-Katanga and leader of CONAKAT, the Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga. He died in July, resulting in his delisting by the EU Dec. 10 (see 2112130012).
Vietnam's Lang Son province reduced fees for border gate infrastructure and service prices at the Tan Thanh border gate, which is facing massive congestion of agricultural products for nearly a month, the state-run CustomsNews reported Dec. 29. Over 4,200 export-carrying trucks, 2,924 of which were carrying fresh fruit, were held up at border gates in Lang Son province as of Dec. 25, primarily at the Tan Thanh border gate, the report said. Accordingly, the rate for vehicles carrying export and import goods dropped by 10%, and the rate for vehicles carrying business goods in the form of temporary imports for re-export, goods temporarily exported for reimport, border gate transfer goods, foods from foreign countries stored in bonded warehouses for export and goods in transit was dropped by 5%. Lang Son also decided to provide free treatment for drivers infected with COVID-19. The report said the congestion of agricultural products has been on the increase because of China’s tightening of trade rules for COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control.
The U.S. began its eighth round of talks this week about rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but it’s still soon to tell whether Iran has returned with a “more constructive approach to this round,” a State Department spokesperson said Dec. 28. The State Department earlier this month said both sides remained far apart on a range of sanctions issues (see 2112200009). “At a minimum, any progress, we believe, is falling short of Iran’s accelerating nuclear steps and is far too slow,” the spokesperson said. “As we’ve said before, this can’t continue or it will soon be too late to return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA, something we have sincerely and steadfastly sought to do for a number of months now.”
China this week released its first export control white paper, which includes an overview of its recently created export control law (see 2010190033), how it has sought to improve and coordinate its export restrictions with trading partners and its expectations for industry compliance. The paper also describes some new export control initiatives, including a broader enforcement approach and potential revisions to China’s export control list.
Rockley Photonics, a California photonics-based health monitoring and communications solutions company, won’t follow through with a sale to Hengtong, a Chinese power and fiber optic cable manufacturer, following Hengtong's addition to the U.S. Entity List this month. Rockley suggested the sale, which it described as a “data-communications-related technical sale,” could be subject to the Export Administration Regulations and require a Bureau of Industry and Security license.
The U.K. lifted its suspension on licensing military exports to Turkey, the Export Control Joint Unit said in a Dec. 13 notice. Confident that decisions on all license applications to Turkey can be taken on a case-by-case basis following a careful assessment against the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, the ECJU released the military export suspension and will work with advisory government departments to get through some of the applications, it said. The expectation is that the unit will take around eight weeks to clear the backlog of existing applications for Turkey, the ECJU said.
Switzerland has added 17 individuals and 11 entities to its Belarus sanctions regime, following the EU in its sanctions relating to Belarus' moves aiding illegal border crossings into the EU. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs' sanctioned individuals and entities include high-ranking Belarusian officials and hotels that contributed to the border crossings.
China has sanctioned four members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government commission, in response to the U.S. designation of four Chinese officials, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The individuals are the commission's Chair Nadine Maenza, Vice Chair Nury Turkel and commissioners Anurima Bhargava and James Carr. The restrictions consist of a travel ban and an asset freeze. The U.S. imposed its sanctions due to China's human rights violations against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region.