Jacob Kopnick

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas temporarily halted administrative proceedings concerning SpaceX's export control-related hiring practices, in a Nov. 8 order. Granting the space exploration company's motion for a preliminary injunction in part and denying it in part, Judge Rolando Olvera said SpaceX is likely to succeed on its claim that a law making it illegal to discriminate based on citizenship status in hiring decisions, 8 U.S.C. 1324b, violates the Appointments Clause under the U.S. Constitution (Space Exploration Technologies v. Carol Bell, S.D. Tex. # 23-00137).

The EU General Court on Nov. 8 rejected Mikalai Varabei's application to annul his sanctions listing under the EU's Belarus sanctions regime. Varabei was challenging the European Council's finding that his activities in various Belarussian economic sectors show that he benefits from President Aleksandr Lukashenko's regime.

The U.K. added 29 entries to the Russia sanctions regime Nov. 8, targeting Russian gold refiners and producers as well as international networks supporting the country's gold, oil, finance and defense sectors. The country's National Crime Agency also issued a new alert to make financial institutions aware of how Russia is using gold to evade sanctions.

The World Trade Organization on Oct. 31 launched an import licensing portal to allow members to draft and submit notifications online. The platform, released during the Committee on Import Licensing Procedures' Oct. 31 meeting, will provide members an "improved database of all import licensing procedures" of WTO countries, allowing members to search by country, product and legislation. Members can assign different levels of access to national authorities to draft, edit or submit their notifications, as well as use the portal to communicate and swap draft notifications and comments with the WTO Secretariat. During the committee meeting, members also reviewed 42 notifications of import licenses, WTO said.

The World Trade Organization said its working group on food security is aiming for the end of November to reach consensus on a final set of recommendations for least-developed countries (LDCs) and net food-importing developing countries (NFIDCs). During the working group's Oct. 31 meeting, participating members revised a report from the group's coordinator, Norway's Kjetil Tysdal, which covers four areas: "access to international food markets, financing of food imports, agricultural and production resilience of LDCs and NFIDCs, and horizontal, cross-cutting issues," the WTO said. Tysdal said he will make further revisions in the "coming days," noting the final meeting is set for Nov. 13, when the group is expected to finalize its recommendations for the full Committee on Agriculture's approval. The committee will meet Nov. 27-29.

The Rotterdam District Court on Oct. 31 sentenced an unnamed Russian businessman to an 18-month prison term for violating the EU's Russia sanctions, according to an unofficial translation. The charges against the man include selling dual-use goods, including a "certain type of integrated circuit" and drones to Russian companies, along with selling, delivering, transferring and exporting nine other integrated circuit types to the same unnamed Russian companies.

World Trade Organization members' compliance rates with notification requirements for subsidies and countervailing duties remain "concerningly low," according to the chair of the WTO's Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Compliance is crucial to the function of that committee, its chair, New Zealand's James Lester, said Oct. 27.

The U.S. this week unsealed two indictments charging multiple people in schemes to deliver export-controlled dual-use goods to Russia. In both cases, DOJ charged Russian nationals and others with using Brooklyn-based companies to buy goods on behalf of sanctioned end-users or others connected to Russia's military.

The EU is working on a proposal to use "windfall profits" from its Russian sanctions regime in an aid package for Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Oct. 27. The proposal would pool the assets, which currently are "benefitting a limited number of financial institutions in the" EU, and channel them via the EU budget "en bloc" for Ukraine's reconstruction.

The U.K. High Court on Oct. 26 rejected an application from Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman to overturn the U.K.'s decision to refuse three licenses for payments related to the businessman's property and his management company. The court said the U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation legally concluded that a license may not be granted if the payment is made "directly" or "indirectly" to another designated individual or entity.