The Office of Foreign Assets Control on July 29 sanctioned two people and four organizations for supporting Russia's "global malign influence operations and election interference activities." The sanctions target Natalya Valeryevna Burlinova, founder and president of an entity that relies on state funding and has ties to Russian intelligence services. The agency also designated Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) "co-optee," who has worked to "promulgate the Kremlin’s disinformation and malign influence agenda," OFAC said. Also sanctioned are the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, Ionov Transkontinental, STOP-Imperialism and the Center for Support and Development of Public Initiative Creative Diplomacy.
CBP hopes to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to eventually mandate electronic export manifest (see 2207180041 and 2205060015) by the end of this year, said Jim Swanson, an agency official. The agency has written the regulations for ocean, air and rail manifest but is in the middle of a lengthy government review process before it can publish the NPRM in the Federal Register and officially request public comments, Swanson said.
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation updated its general financial sanctions guidance, laying out new guidelines on licensing time frames. OFSI said it no longer seeks to engage with license applications within four weeks, aiming to review all new applications "as soon as practicable." The agency said it prioritizes cases at times of high demand and those involving issues of "personal basic needs and/or wider humanitarian issues at stake which are of material impact or urgency, or which are deemed to be of particular strategic, economic or administrative importance." OFSI said parties will get a case reference number and an acknowledgment if their case has been selected for review but won't provide regular updates during the review given the high volume of applications.
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on July 26 issued a general license, titled "Payment to UK Insurance Companies for Building and Engineering Insurance," under its autonomous sanctions regimes. The license indefinitely permits designated individuals and entities to use a frozen bank account to pay U.K. insurers insurance premiums, reinsurance premiums and broker commissions for building and engineering insurance coverage. The license further allows U.K. insurers to receive these payments and to make return payments to frozen U.K. bank accounts due to overpayments and the payment of funds due as a result of a claim made relating to the payments. Sanctioned parties can also receive return payments from U.K. insurers into frozen bank accounts.
The EU dropped Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf al-Werfalli from its Libya sanctions list following his death, the European Council said in a July 27 implementing decision. Al-Werfalli was originally listed in 2020. A former commander of the Benghazi-based al-Saiqa Brigade, he allegedly was involved in various human rights abuses, including executions in Libya. The council also updated the statement of reasons for the sanctions listings of Russian businessman Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and Quren Salih Al Qadhafi, a former Libyan ambassador to Chad.
Stellantis, an auto-making giant and owner of the Jeep brand, closed down its only Jeep factory in China because of local political interference in the car market, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares told Bloomberg July 28. The company is rolling out an "asset-light" strategy in a bid to appease concerns that political tensions could result in sanctions on the carmaker. “We have been seeing over the last few years more and more political interference in the world of business in China,” Tavares said. “We don’t want to be a victim of cross-sanctions as has been the case for other companies in other regions of the world recently.”
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls changed how certain submitted forms are displayed in the Defense Export Control and Compliance System, the agency said in a notice this week. DDTC said submitted forms in the Registration, Commodity Jurisdiction and Advisory Opinion applications will be displayed as PDFs “as opposed to a webform view,” which will allow DDTC to “store the request exactly as it was submitted, and the form will remain unaffected by any future policy changes or system updates.” Questions should be directed to the DDTC Help Desk.
The U.N. Security Council this week amended 44 entries on its sanctions list related to North Korea. The changes update identifying information for the entries.
The U.S. is stepping up efforts to boost liquefied natural gas exports to Europe as the Russia-Ukraine war drags on, Jose Fernandez, a senior State Department official, said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week. He said he recently met with several European countries that are asking to buy more U.S. LNG.
The U.K. created two new instruments under its Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 to address certain gaps in its sanctions enforcement regime. Both instruments introduce new powers to authorize government agencies to share information to assist HM Treasury in carrying out its sanctions functions, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said, with the new powers coming into force Aug. 9. The instruments also widen the definition of a "relevant firm" to include crypto-asset exchange providers and custodian wallet providers, with this change entering into force Aug. 30, the FCDO said.