Congress explicitly gave district courts jurisdiction over the intended U.S. prosecution of a sovereign-owned bank for evading U.S. sanctions, the government argued in a brief vying for jurisdiction for the case at the Supreme Court. The U.S. said that nothing in the common law or the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prevents Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank "from facing criminal consequences for violating U.S. law." Allowing the "novel claim of immunity" to thwart the criminal prosecution of the bank "would be unprecedented" and is unsupported by the FSIA, since its "text, structure, and history demonstrate that it does not apply to criminal cases," the brief said.
The Court of International Trade in a Dec. 20 opinion denied an injunction bid pending appeal from certain plaintiffs in an attorney conflict-of interest suit. After recently rejecting the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Gary Katzmann this time rejected the injunction motion pending appeal since the appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit "has not yet been noticed," but even if it had, the injunction "is unwarranted." Katzmann said that the plaintiffs fail to both show a "strong showing of success on the merits" and prove that they will suffer irreparable harm without the injunction.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP improperly found that importer Diamond Tools Technology made a "material and false" statement in the agency's Enforce and Protect Act evasion finding, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Dec. 16 opinion. Sending the case back to CBP again, Judge Timothy Reif ruled that the agency's use of the EAPA statute is inconsistent with the law's language and structure, and even if its use was legal, its interpretation of the statute is not entitled to deference. Diamond Tools properly classified its merchandise as not covered merchandise given the guidance it had at the time, the judge said.
China officially requested dispute consultations with the U.S. at the World Trade Organization Dec. 15 over American export controls on certain semiconductors, the WTO announced. China, which announced the move earlier in the week (see 2212120061), said the restrictions violate Article XXII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT), Article XXII of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, Article 8 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures and Article 64.1 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Dec. 11 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
CBP's EAPA determination that Blue Pipe Steel Center evaded an antidumping duty order was incorrect because the Commerce Department has since ruled the imported line pipe outside the scope of the order, Blue Pipe said in a Dec. 14 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade (Blue Pipe Steel Center Co., Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 21-00081).
The Commerce Department’s recent preliminary determination that Southeast Asian solar cells and panels are circumventing antidumping and countervailing duties (see 2212020064) left several questions unanswered, and lawyers for the Solar Energy Industries Association hope the agency will clarify these issues as the case proceeds to its final determinations, they said during a webinar Dec. 13.
An indictment was unsealed Dec. 12 in a New York district court charging five Russian nationals and two U.S. nationals for their role in a global procurement and money laundering network for the Russian government, DOJ announced. Concurrent with the indictment, the Bureau of Industry and Security issued a 180-day temporary denial order against three of the defendants and two companies for illegally sending controlled exports to Russia as part of the Moscow-led scheme.