The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Alain Mukonda and 12 companies linked to Mukonda for providing support to sanctioned billionaire Dan Gertler, OFAC said Dec. 6. Mukonda and the companies are based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Iran hasn’t offered “serious” proposals to return to the Iranian nuclear deal and has continued to accelerate its nuclear program despite objections from the U.S. and other countries, a senior State Department official said. The official, speaking to reporters Dec. 4, suggested the latest round of talks to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ended poorly after Iran demanded too many concessions and offered too little in return.
The Biden administration unveiled a new strategy to counter corruption, and officials said they are planning new sanctions in the coming days to target corrupt actors and other international criminals. As part of the strategy, which came after a 200-day review by federal agencies to determine how the U.S. can better curb illicit finance, the administration will increase anti-corruption work at the Treasury, State and Commerce departments, according to a Dec. 6 White House fact sheet. The U.S. also will take “meaningful steps” to stop corrupt actors from using the U.S. and the international financial systems.
FDA is recommending that exporters of certain food products to China provide the agency with facility information by Dec. 17 to avoid a potential trade disruption from the entry into effect of Chinese food facility requirements on Jan. 1, it said. While FDA continues to engage China’s General Administration of Customs (GACC) on the potential for self-registration of U.S. exporters to China, FDA says it still has yet to receive a satisfactory response and may be required to submit exporter registration data to China at the beginning of the new year.
The Commerce Department will soon launch a new feature to automatically warn filers if they are exporting a controlled item without a license, an improvement the agency hopes leads to better due diligence among exporters. The agency will deploy the Automated Export System feature Jan. 13, 2022, the Census Bureau said in a Dec. 6 email to industry. The announcement has been expected since October (see 2110180027). The new feature will alert exporters that incorrectly list License Requirement NLR (No License Required) for shipments that require a license under the Export Administration Regulations. The message will appear with the response code 66Q and will serve as a warning message to filers for the first six months after the Jan. 13 effective date, Census said. After the six-month period, the agency will upgrade the warning to a “fatal” error, which will block the exporter from moving forward with the filing. Exporters having difficulties with the error message or reporting their information correctly but still receiving the message should email the Bureau of Industry and Security at ECDOEXS@bis.doc.gov, Census said. Exporters should ask about the Export Control Classification Number associated with their export and any other “additional licensing authorization that may be required,” Census said.
The European Union should impose sanctions and export restrictions on Israel-based NSO Group over accusations that the company provided spyware to hack human rights activists and journalists, more than 80 human rights groups and other activists wrote to the EU. In a Dec. 3 letter, the groups said NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware was reportedly used to hack the devices of Palestinian human rights activists, “further evidence of a pattern of human rights abuses facilitated by NSO Group through spyware sales to governments that use the technology to persecute civil society and social movements in many countries around the world.” The groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, pointed to the U.S. Commerce Department’s November decision to add NSO Group to the Entity List (see 2111030010). “The EU should follow suit and urgently put NSO on its global sanction list and take all appropriate action to prohibit the sale, transfer, export, import and use of NSO Group technologies, as well as the provision of services that support NSO Group's products until adequate human rights safeguards are in place,” said the letter, which was addressed to EU member states and Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief. The NSO Group didn’t immediately comment.
The European Union General Court on Nov. 24 dismissed an application from the European Political Subdivision of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to drop its inclusion on the EU's terrorist sanctions list. The ruling upholds the group's place on the sanctions regime and said the European Council could rely on the 2001 decision by the United Kingdom home secretary to list the LTTE because the U.K. government is a "competent authority" for the purpose of making the sanctions listing. The court also said that the EU had sufficiently backed the listing action in 2019-2020.
A host of countries aligned with the European Union's recent sanctions measures concerning the situation in Guinea, cyberattacks against the EU or its member states and Turkey's unauthorized drilling activities in the Eastern Mediterranean, the European Council said. North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Ukraine and Moldova aligned with the Guinea sanctions regime that extends to Oct. 27, 2022, the council noted Dec. 2.
The United Kingdom amended sanctions listings under its Russia and Syria sanctions regimes, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said Dec. 2. Russians Vladimir Andreevich Konstantinov and Petr Grigorievich Jarosh are still subject to an asset freeze, with slight modifications to their sanctions listings, OFSI said. Syrians Samir Izzat Qadi Amin and Samir Hassan remain subject to an asset freeze, with the statement of reasons on their listings updated, a notice said.
The Association of Certified Sanction Specialists recently added a blog post on the “Do’s and Don’ts of Sanctions Investigations,” detailing how firms should build their investigative teams, document the process, report findings and more. Sanctions investigations can be “hugely time-consuming and a major distraction from the day-to-day running of a business,” ACSS said, and companies should make sure they get the “balance right so that your investigation enables you to understand what went wrong, how to deal with the consequences and how to ensure it does not happen again.”