The Commerce Department should expand an exemption to allow U.S. companies to participate in standards-setting bodies that have members designated on the Entity List (see 2006160035), the Information Technology Industry Council said in a set of recommendations to the Biden administration. If the exemption isn’t expanded, the U.S. will risk ceding further “ground, influence, and leadership to foreign competitors” in international technology standards development, ITI said Feb. 10.
The State Department has crafted new guidelines for preparing defense trade agreements and plans to release them soon, said Catherine Hamilton, licensing director at the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. She said the agency also plans to make changes to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to reflect the new document, which would update submission guidelines for Technical Assistance Agreements, Manufacturing License Agreements, and Warehouse and Distribution Agreements.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add seven entities to the Entity List for nuclear and nonproliferation reasons. The entities are for one company in China, five in Pakistan and one in the United Arab Emirates. The Chinese company will be subject to a license review policy of presumption of denial for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations, and the other entities will be subject to certain nuclear end-user licensing restrictions. No license exceptions will be available for the entities. BIS will also make some corrections and clarifications to existing entries on the Entity List. The additions take effect upon publication in the Federal Register, scheduled for Feb. 14.
The U.K.'s House of Commons held a debate session titled "Kazakhstan: Anti-corruption Sanctions" Feb. 3 to discuss imposing restrictive measures on bad actors in the Central Asian nation. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the All-Party Parliament Group -- an informal collection of cross-party groups with no official status in Parliament -- said the U.K. should use its global anti-corruption sanctions regime to designate the "kleptocrats" in Kazakhstan. Hodge called for sanctions on 24 individuals, all of whom she said have benefited from the alleged kleptocracy at the heart of the Kazakh government. Many of those individuals are related to the Kazakh president.
The U.K. amended two entries under its Global Anti-Corruption sanctions regime, in a Feb. 8 financial sanctions notice. The amended entries are for Ashraf Said Ahmed Hussein Ali, who has been involved in corruption in South Sudan, and Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who has taken part in the misappropriation of public funds in Equatorial Guinea, the notice said. An asset freeze remains in effect for each.
The EU released information Feb. 8 about the status of its member states' implementation of a regime for the brokering, technical assistance, transit, transfer and control of exports of dual-use items. An EU regulation mandated, among other things, that the member states employ a dual-use export control program, but the European Commission found that only eight nations have either partially or fully implemented the program. Those countries are Belgium, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland. The bloc's largest economies, on the other hand, including France, Germany, Spain and Italy, have not implemented the export controls program.
The White House this week released an updated list of critical and emerging technology categories that are important to national security, including a new subset of “novel, advanced technologies” for each category. The updated list, first issued in 2020 as part of a national strategy to better coordinate agency efforts amid technology competition with China (see 2010150038), will help guide “new and existing efforts to promote U.S. technological leadership,” the White House said. The list could intersect with work being done by the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is crafting export controls over various emerging and foundational technologies as part of the Export Control Reform Act (see 2201280045). Similarly, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. may be more inclined to scrutinize transactions involving sensitive and emerging technologies (see 2112140011).
Although the Commerce and State departments have been able to conduct some export end-use checks during the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said both agencies continue to face challenges scheduling on-site inspections.
The French Court of Cassation requested the European Court of Justice to interpret an element of the EU's sanctions on Iraq. The request comes in a case brought by Dutch air pollution control equipment company Instrubel NV in which a French court found that "preventative attachments" against Montana Management -- a trust fund formerly owned by Saddam Hussein -- were void because Montana hadn't been served. Montana was placed under the EU's Iraq sanctions regime in 2006, an EU Sanctions blog post said. Instead of serving Montana, the Iraqi government was served in the case. The Iraqi government in 2011 took control over the mandate of the Development Fund of Iraq, which the U.N. set up in 2003 to distribute assets seized from the Iraqi regime.
For individuals criminally convicted for the misappropriation of European Union state funds, frozen funds belonging to those individuals relating to the EU's Tunisian sanctions regime can remain frozen after that person has died "until court orders for the recovery of the misappropriated State funds and the payment of fines have been executed," the European Council said in a Feb. 3 regulation. If the deceased individual had not been criminally convicted, then the funds will remain frozen "for a reasonable period of time," the council said. If an action to recover misappropriated funds is brought during that period, the funds will remain frozen until "such action is dismissed or, if it is upheld, until the court’s order for the recovery of the misappropriated funds has been executed."