Christopher Stagg joined Miller & Chevalier as counsel in its International Department, the firm announced. Stagg formerly served as a senior policy adviser with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls at the State Department, where he worked as the deputy lead in rewriting the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Export Administration Regulations, the firm said. This work also entailed revising the U.S. Munitions List and Commerce Control List. At his own firm, Stagg cultivated experience on export controls, economic sanctions and Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. matters, the firm said.
The European Union General Court dismissed the applications of 10 Democratic Republic of the Congo nationals to drop their 2019 sanctions relistings, in 10 opinions Sept. 15. The European Council's reasoning for the relistings was sufficient to allow the DRC nationals to challenge the validity of the acts, the court held. The EC also guaranteed their right to be heard by taking the applicants' observations and providing specific explanations, the court said. Even if the applicants were no longer DRC officials, the court said that the EC established enough of a link between the human rights situation in the DRC and the applicants.The orders concerned the applications of Jean-Claude Kazembe Musonda, Alex Kande Mupompa, Ferdinand Ilunga Luyoyo, Kalev Mutondo, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, Eric Ruhorimbere, Gabriel Amisi Kumba, Evariste Boshab, John Numbi and Celestin Kanyama.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will soon publish an amendment to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to reflect new U.S. sanctions against Ethiopia (see 2109170036), the agency said Sept. 17. DDTC said it’s implementing a policy of denial for exports of defense articles and defense services “to or for the armed forces, police, intelligence, or other internal security forces” of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and will soon make the change official in the ITAR.
The Bureau of Industry and Security sent an interim final rule for interagency review that could affect certain information security export controls for cybersecurity items. The rule, received by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Sept. 17, builds upon a proposed rule published by BIS in 2015 that was intended to gather feedback on new Wassenaar Arrangement controls on some cybersecurity items. At the time, BIS said public comments “revealed serious scope and implementation issues regarding these controls,” so the agency returned to Wassenaar to renegotiate the controls. The interim final rule, if approved and published, could outline the “progress” BIS made during the renegotiation and make changes to the Commerce Control List.
Foreign direct investment between the U.S. and China involving technologies dropped 96% from 2016 to 2020, while overall investment dropped by about 75%, Bain & Company said in a Sept. 20 report. The consulting firm pointed to various potential reasons for the steep decline, including the spike in investment and export scrutiny by the U.S., which has strengthened its foreign investment screening tools and export controls in recent years to specifically target China (see 2001140060 and 2103030057).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control’s August penalty against a Romanian bank and its U.S. parent company underscored the various sanctions risks during acquisitions and the many compliance issues foreign subsidiaries can cause for their owners, law firms said. The settlement agreement particularly served as a reminder to non-U.S. companies that OFAC’s sanctions jurisdiction can extend far beyond the U.S., and there are “no shorthand compliance measures that can guarantee protection,” Arnold & Porter said in a September alert.
The European Union's General Court annulled the 2019 and 2020 relisting acts for Libya's former minister for agriculture, animal and maritime resources, Abdel Majid Al-Gaoud, in a Sept. 15 order. The judgment removes Al-Gaoud from the EU's Libya sanctions regime. The former minister died in March 2021 and was delisted by the EU the following month. The court said that the European Council should have taken Al-Gaoud's circumstances into consideration when deciding whether to relist him in that he stopped being minister with the fall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime and was held in prison 2011 to 2017. The court also reasoned that Al-Gaoud's position as a former minister did “not have a sufficiently solid factual basis” that justified keeping him on the sanctions list. Had the council simply relied on his position as a former minister, his status would have been “frozen” and the council's periodic review provided for in listing measures would have had no practical effect, the court said.
Hong Kong last week updated its export and import control lists for certain chemical weapons and strategic commodities to align its regulations with multilateral nonproliferation regimes. The revisions, which took effect Sept. 17, reflect control changes recently made by the Chemical Weapons Convention, Hong Kong’s Trade and Industry Department said Sept. 16. The agency also reminded traders that violators of the regulations face various fines and prison time.
The Biden administration is planning new sanctions to make it more difficult for hackers to use digital currencies to profit from ransomware attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 17. The sanctions could come as soon as this week and will be accompanied by guidance from the Treasury Department about the risks linked to facilitating ransomware payments, including penalties, the report said. The sanctions are expected to target specific people or entities rather than an “entire crypto infrastructure where ransomware transactions are suspected of taking place,” the report said. A Treasury spokesperson didn’t comment.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on Sept. 17 sanctioned a network of Lebanon- and Kuwait-based financial conduits as well as a network of financial facilities that support Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The networks have helped launder tens of millions of dollars on behalf of terrorist groups and conduct currency exchange operations and trades in gold and electronics” for both Hezbollah and IRGC-QF, OFAC said.