A bipartisan bill could place new sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese technology companies by adding them to the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List. The bill, introduced in the Senate this week by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Rick Scott, R-Fla., would impose financial sanctions on “untrustworthy Chinese 5G producers who engage in economic espionage against the United States,” the lawmakers said, and “effectively freeze them” from using the U.S. financial system. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., introduced a companion bill in the House.
The U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation notified industry this week that it has removed an expired general license that authorized certain energy payments related to Russia’s Gazprombank. The license took effect in April and expired in October.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Jose Calderon Rijo, leader of a Dominican Republic-based criminal organization, for engaging in major drug trafficking, according to a Dec. 14 news release. In addition to drug trafficking, Rijo's organization allegedly engages in money laundering and public corruption. The organization directly controls several drug trafficking routes into the U.S. and is "one of the most prolific drug trafficking organizations in the Caribbean," OFAC said. Calderon Rijo was arrested and charged with drug trafficking offenses by Dominican Republic law enforcement authorities in 2012 but continued to oversee the organization from prison. In September, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida charged him with multiple drug trafficking offenses.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week renewed a general license that authorizes certain transactions related to safety and environmental measures for certain sanctioned vessels. General License 21A, which replaces GL 21, is valid through 12:01 a.m. Jan. 14. The license was scheduled to expire Dec. 15 (see 2211150053). OFAC also amended one of its frequently asked questions, FAQ 1097, to reflect the renewal.
The U.K.’s Export Control Joint Unit posted several new guidance documents to help exporters of controlled items develop compliance procedures, pass audits and meet license obligations. The documents include a compliance code of practice for export licensing, a checklist of internal export control compliance procedures and set of export control compliance case studies.
The U.K.’s Department for International Trade this week made changes to its export control regulations. The changes include a correction to a “mistake made by an earlier amending instrument” and the removal of Russia as a “permitted destination for the Retained General Export Authorisations.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security isn’t preparing any “imminent” emerging technology export controls on artificial intelligence items, Hillary Hess, the agency’s regulatory policy director, said during a technical advisory committee meeting this week. She also denied an industry rumor the U.S. is preparing to issue a set of sweeping, advanced AI controls, similar to the semiconductor restrictions against China that were released in October.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add a host of Chinese and Russian entities to the Entity List, including top Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., the agency said in a pair of notices released Dec. 15.
The Bureau of Industry and Security should have given its technical advisory committees more time to review its new chip controls before they were published in October (see 2210070049), which would have helped BIS mitigate unintended consequences for a dense and complex set of restrictions, a chip industry official and an advisory committee member said this week. The semiconductor industry also wished BIS had first proposed some of the restrictions for public comment before making them final, the official said, or delayed the effective date to give companies more time to decipher the rules, especially surrounding the new U.S.-persons restrictions.
The U.S. on Dec. 13 confirmed it has received a request from China for consultations at the World Trade Organization over U.S. semiconductor export controls (see 2212120061) and said it opposes China’s move. “As we have already communicated to the [People’s Republic of China], these targeted actions relate to national security, and the WTO is not the appropriate forum to discuss issues related to national security,” Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said in an emailed statement.