The U.K. issued a General License permitting relevant parties to perform activities to ensure the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance relating to the war in Ukraine, in Crimea and non-Ukraine controlled areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The license indefinitely permits such activity and also says any money used to carry out such humanitarian activity can't be from funds owned, held or controlled by a sanctioned individual or entity.
The Census Bureau soon will launch a fatal alert for filers in the Automated Export System if they are exporting a controlled item without a license, the agency said in a July 7 email to industry. Beginning July 13, the new feature won't allow export filings to proceed if they incorrectly list License Requirement NLR (No License Required) for shipments that require a license under the Export Administration Regulations.
The joint alert issued last month by the Commerce and Treasury departments (see 2206280056) puts companies “on notice” about the types of red flags they should be monitoring for potential sanctions and export control evasion tactics, Lewis Brisbois said in a July alert. While the red flags in the alert aren’t exhaustive, companies should consider them alongside “all surrounding facts and circumstances” when filing a suspicious activity report to Treasury, the firm said, or while complying with U.S. export restrictions. “At the very least, ‘covered entities’ will need to conduct a fact-intensive analysis on these potential 'red flag' indicators to ensure compliance with U.S. law,” the firm said.
It’s unclear whether the Bureau of Industry and Security's decision to stop differentiating between emerging and foundational technologies under the Export Control Reform Act (see 2205200017) will have any real impact on export controls, law firms said. Torres Trade Law said this month that “only time will tell” if the change allows BIS to impose the controls more quickly, but companies should closely monitor the pace of upcoming restrictions, especially if they’re dealing in “cutting-edge technologies.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security on July 7 sent an interim final rule for interagency review that will clarify how export controls are applied in the context of international standards-setting bodies. The rule will specifically authorize certain items and “releases of technology” to entities on the Entity List “for standards setting or development in standards organizations,” BIS said.
Although Chinese companies with little international exposure may decide to violate export restrictions against Russia, most of the larger companies likely won’t take the risk, experts said. So far, most Chinese companies are complying with the sanctions and only continuing to buy Russian oil and gas, the experts said, despite strong opposition to Western sanctions by the Chinese government.
The EU is looking at ways to bolster its sanctions enforcement regime and harmonize it across member states, the Financial Times reported. Mairead McGuinness, the EU's commissioner for financial stability, financial services and the capital markets union, said officials are contemplating opening a version of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. McGuinness said the commission is looking at other enforcement measures as well, including forcing sanctioned parties to disclose their assets, syncing definitions of control across nations and broadening registers of beneficial ownership. The commission further requested reports from member states on sanctions enforcement, FT reported. Along these lines, the European Council requested the consent of the European Parliament to add the violation of restrictive measures to the list of EU crimes laid out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU to crack down on sanctions circumvention (see 2207010014).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control in June sanctioned a network of Iranian petrochemical producers along with Chinese and Emirati front companies that broker sales of Iranian petrochemicals to China and East Asia. In response, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry expressed China's opposition to "illegal and unjustifiable unilateral sanctions" from the U.S. "We urge the US side to abandon the wrong practice of resorting to sanctions at every turn and contribute positively to negotiations on resuming compliance with the JCPOA," the spokesperson said July 7 during a regular press conference in China, according to an English translation of the transcript provided. "The international community, including China, has conducted normal cooperation with Iran within the framework of international law. This is reasonable and lawful without harm done to any third party, and deserves to be respected and protected."
China will officially begin security reviews for certain data exports Sept. 1, Reuters reported July 7, allowing China to regulate how its companies can send the information overseas. The reviews could capture past transactions conducted by a range of firms, including any entities that have sent personal information overseas belonging to 100,000 or more users, or “sensitive" personal information of 10,000 or more users, since Jan. 1, 2021, the report said.
The U.S. should closely monitor Chinese attempts to steal sensitive information and technology from universities, but not in a way that will sacrifice open academic exchanges, said Christine Fox, a former Defense Department official, speaking during a July 7 Brookings Institution event. She said the threat of trade theft from China is real, but the number of foreign Chinese students and researchers who try to steal technology is just a small percentage of the total.