China expressed serious concern over reports that the U.S. may impose tougher sanctions on the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China's leading semiconductor manufacturer. In Dec. 15 comments, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry said that "by overstretching the concept of national security, certain US politicians politicize and instrumentalize science and technology and economic and trade issues based on ideology." The spokesperson said the sanctions would run contrary to market economy and fair competition principles and harm the prospect of security in global supply chains.
Thea Kendler, President Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary for export administration at the Bureau of Industry and Security, was confirmed by the Senate Dec. 14. Kendler previously worked on the U.S.'s criminal case against Huawei as an export control prosecutor and told lawmakers in September she will look to aggressively stop technology exports that may be used for human rights violations (see 2109210058).
A group of Senate and House Democrats called on the Biden administration to designate more spyware technology companies for human rights abuses, saying the designations will complement existing export restrictions meant to curb their sales of surveillance technologies to authoritarian governments. In a Dec. 15 letter to the Treasury and the State Department, the lawmakers said the U.S. should specifically impose Global Magnitsky sanctions against United Arab Emirates-based DarkMatter (see 2110220033), Israel-based NSO Group and European companies Nexa Technologies and Trovicor. The sanctions should target the companies as well as their CEOs and other senior executives, the letter said, adding that they all have sold surveillance technologies and services to help governments commit human rights violations.
The U.S. announced a new effort this week to modernize and expand U.S. sanctions authorities against transnational criminal groups, including drug traffickers and their enablers. The initiative, outlined in a Dec. 15 executive order, will build on existing U.S. authorities under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by allowing Treasury to more efficiently sanction groups that traffic synthetic opioids and precursor chemicals, a senior administration official said. “The new EO will give Treasury greater flexibility, speed and power to sanction those within the global drug trade,” the official told reporters Dec. 15.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working on a proposed rule that would create a formal license amendment process, which could allow applicants to revise certain license information rather than start over with a replacement application, said Tim Mooney, an official in BIS’s regulatory policy division. BIS drafted a version of the proposed rule toward the end of the Obama administration, Mooney said, but the idea was nixed after some interagency disagreements about the rule’s scope.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will add 37 entities to the Entity List this week for supporting China’s military modernization efforts or Iran’s weapons program and defense industries. The entities, located in China, Georgia, Malaysia and Turkey, will be subject to a license review policy of presumption of denial for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations. No license exceptions will be available for the entities, BIS also added three additional aliases under Huawei’s Entity List entry. The additions take effect Dec. 17.
The United Kingdom is making changes to the structure and format of the U.K. Sanctions List, with the alterations set to take effect in February 2022, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said. OFSI issued a guidance to users of the list to anticipate the changes. The amendments include data standardization to drop duplications, unnecessary punctuation and improve consistency; and new fields designed to increase the detail and structure of the data. Some of these new fields include "name type" that shows whether a name is a primary name, primary name variation or alias; "passport additional information"; and "National Identifier additional information," which will describe the source of a number that is listed in a national identity card, for instance. The format changes also include alterations to some field names to make their purpose clearer. An example of this change includes changing the "Individual, Entity, Ship - Vessel" field to "Ship" to align with the terminology in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018.
Cryptocurrency transactions risk violating sanctions regulations in addition to posing money laundering and terrorist financing risks, Dutch Central Bank De Nederlandsche Bank said in a draft Q&A on complying with sanctions measures for such transactions, according to an unofficial translation. The bank is running a consultation period that is set to close on Dec. 17. The Q&A covers such questions as who falls within the scope of the "relationship" insofar as crypto providers take measures to check whether relationships have been sanctioned, and what measures does a crypto service provider take when transacting with crypto to check whether the individuals or entities involved have been sanctioned. The guidance also discusses good practice for cryptocurrency service providers and risk analysis.
Senate and House lawmakers reached a compromise agreement this week on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which includes a sanctions provision targeting human rights abusers in China. The text of the agreement, released just hours before it passed in the House on Dec. 14, would require the Biden administration to identify and sanction any foreign person, including Chinese government officials, responsible for “serious’ human rights abuses against Muslim minority groups in China's Xinjiang region. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested President Joe Biden will support the bill. "We have been clear that we share Congress' view that action must be taken to hold [China] accountable for human rights abuses, and to address forced labor in Xinjiang," Psaki told reporters Dec. 14. The U.S. has already imposed a range of sanctions and other trade and investment restrictions against Chinese people and entities for human rights violations in Xinjiang, including an investment ban against SenseTime and sanctions against two Xinjiang officials this month (see 2112100034).
The Bureau of Industry and Security is still reviewing export controls on facial recognition software, surveillance-related products and other goods controlled for crime-control reasons after requesting feedback on the potential restrictions in July 2020, said Hillary Hess, BIS’s regulatory policy director. Although no new restrictions have been announced, Hess said new controls for items described in the rule, including crime-control goods that may be used for human rights abuses, are still being considered. “We have been looking at that,” Hess said during a Dec. 14 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. “It’s definitely on our plate.” In the 2020 rule, BIS solicited feedback on possibly imposing new licensing requirements for biometric systems for surveillance, non-lethal visual disruption lasers, long-range acoustic devices and other surveillance-related technologies and goods (see 2007160021). In comments, several technology companies warned BIS against imposing overly broad, unilateral export restrictions that could hurt U.S. competitiveness, while a human rights advocacy group and a U.S. lawmaker called for new export restrictions and suggested existing controls should be strengthened (see 2010090044).