The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published previously issued general licenses under its Venezuela sanctions regime. The full text of each license appears in the notice.
The U.S., the EU and others can take steps to improve how they administer export controls, deliver guidance to industry and more efficiently target dangerous end users, experts said this week. One expert specifically called on the U.S. to revise the Entity List, which should better isolate the worst export control offenders.
A group of European countries not in the EU aligned with two recent sanctions decisions made by the bloc, the European Council announced. On Jan. 30, the council amended the list of individuals and entities subject to its sanctions regime pertaining to those undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine. The countries of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway also imposed the decision, the council said Feb. 14.
Russian oil companies drilled more at their oil fields in 2022 than in more than a decade, Bloomberg reported Feb. 14, with "little sign that international sanctions" directly harmed upstream oil operations.
The U.K. Revenue and Customs issued nearly $4.4 million in compound settlement offers pertaining to unlicensed exports of dual use goods, military goods and related controlled activities in November and December 2022, the Department for International Trade announced. The settlement offers were made to four unnamed U.K. exporters, with the largest settlement of $2.3 million in December for the unlicensed exports of military goods.
China "firmly opposes" the U.S. move to add six Chinese entities to the Entity List over their ties to China's "High Altitude Balloons" intelligence and reconnaissance activities, China's Ministry of Commerce said, according to an unofficial translation. Responding to a reporter's question on the inclusion of the entities, the ministry said it hopes the U.S. "will stop its unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies and will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies."
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls released its notifications to Congress of recently proposed export licenses. The October through December notices feature defense item and service sales to numerous countries, including Canada, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Austria.
The State Department completed interagency review of a final rule this month that would further reorganize the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The rule would reorganize ITAR Part 120 to consolidate all definitions and “to organize the definitions in a manner that enhances their clarity and ease of use,” the agency said. The department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in March issued the first in a series of rules expected to reorganize the ITAR (see 2203220013) and sent it for review in November (see 2211160018).
Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., plan to reintroduce a bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on the relationship between criminal gangs and elites in Haiti and impose “robust” Magnitsky human rights sanctions on people identified in the report. The Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act previously was introduced in October (see 2210190015).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published previously issued general licenses under its Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations. The full text of each license appears in the notice.