A bipartisan group of 72 House members and 22 senators is asking the Biden administration to use the Magnitsky Act to hold Azerbaijani officials accountable for what they called "the ongoing human rights crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh."
The Office of Foreign Assets Control published two previously issued general licenses under its Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations. The full text of each license is available in the notice.
LONDON -- The U.K. is having “deep” conversations with the U.S. about aligning the two countries’ defense export regulations in an effort to slash technology sharing restrictions as part of the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) agreement, said Rosemary Pratt, director of the U.K.’s Export Control Joint Unit. Pratt said she believes the U.K. eventually will update its controls enough to benefit from a new potential defense-related license exemption being considered by Congress.
The U.K. amended the entry for Alexei Kozlov under its Russia sanctions list. Kozlov is a member of the board of directors at Transneft, a Russian energy firm. The Sept. 27 amendment removed identifying information on date of birth, which had been listed only as the year 1974, and added alternate spellings of his name.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network released a proposed rule this week that could delay the deadline for certain companies to comply with its new beneficial ownership information reporting requirements (see 2308160023). The agency is proposing to delay the deadline only for companies created or registered on or after the rule takes effect Jan. 1. The proposal would extend that filing deadline from “30 days to 90 days for entities created or registered on or after January 1, 2024, and before January 1, 2025, to give those entities additional time to understand the new reporting obligation and collect the necessary information to complete the filing,” FinCEN said. Entities created or registered on or after Jan. 1, 2025, would have 30 days to file their reports with FinCEN. Comments are due by Oct. 30.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., replaced Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Menendez stepped down from the role last week amid a federal bribery indictment. Menendez earlier this week pleaded not guilty to charges that he directed federal aid and weapons sales to Egypt in exchange for money and other benefits.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned two entities and one person for “undermining the peace, security, and stability” of Sudan.
The U.S., the U.K. and the EU have seen a recent uptick in sanctioning people involved in organized crime, especially the U.S., which has “far and away sanctioned the greatest number of criminal actors,” the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said in a new report this month. But the nongovernmental organization said countries tend to impose these measures as part of a country-focused sanctions regime, which is a mistake because of the “highly fluid nature of modern illicit markets.” Focusing on traffickers and smugglers in one country, for instance, has a “displacement effect” and drives those actors to instead continue their illegal operations in “areas where they may fall outside the parameters of a sanctions regime.”
Licensing work at sanctions and export control agencies likely will grind to a near halt in the event of a federal government shutdown Oct. 1, though enforcement activities at the Bureau of Industry and Security, Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and Office of Foreign Assets Control will continue -- if previous shutdowns are any guide.
LONDON -- The Bureau of Industry and Security hopes to publish the final version of its Oct. 7 China chip controls in October, said Liz Abraham, senior adviser for international policy at BIS.