Etasis, a Turkish machinery company, was removed from the Office of Foreign Asset Control's Specially Designated Nationals List earlier this month "following an extensive remediation process and a comprehensive compliance transformation," CBC Law Firm announced on LinkedIn. The Istanbul-based firm said its client strengthened sanctions compliance controls, practices and governance structures, which led to the removal. "This delisting reflects the value of sustained commitment to compliance and transparent engagement with regulators and represents a meaningful development for the adoption of sanction compliance programs for private corporations."
The Office of Foreign Assets Control removed several people from its sanctions list this week, including Alexandra Buriko, former chief financial officer of Russian state-owned Sberbank, who resigned from the bank after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She sued the Treasury Department last year to be removed from the Specially Designated Nationals List, and that lawsuit remains pending.
Polish authorities arrested four Polish citizens and one Russian citizen for allegedly illegally importing Russian and Belarusian birch plywood in violation of sanctions, the country's Ministry of Finance said Dec. 29, according to an unofficial translation. The ministry said the plywood was imported into Poland "under false declarations of country of origin -- Kazakhstan and Turkey -- to allow for legal trade within the" EU.
The State Department is finalizing and making several changes to a 2024 AUKUS rule that created an exemption for defense trade among the U.S., Australia and the U.K., including one change that will create a new and separate exemption for exports to support the armed forces of the three nations. The agency also used the final rule to respond to a host of public comments from the 2024 change, declining several recommendations to limit the scope of the Excluded Technology List and providing more guidance about how the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls treats expedited licensing, who qualifies as an authorized user, and more.
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls is continuing an initiative that offers a $500 discount for certain registrants with DDTC, the agency announced last week.
China filed a request for consultations at the World Trade Organization about Indian tariffs on information and communication technology products and subsidy measures for high efficiency solar photovoltaic modules, the WTO said Dec. 23.
Companies in the U.S. and the EU are increasingly being asked by Chinese business partners to certify that they’re not exporting rare earths in violation of Chinese export restrictions, including in some cases through post-shipment audits, lawyers said.
The U.S. government is taking several steps to curb the transfer of U.S. firearms to drug cartels and other violent groups in Mexico, a State Department official told a congressional panel last week.
A bipartisan group of House members led by Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, introduced a compromise Russia sanctions bill Dec. 18 that they hammered out through a flurry of year-end negotiations.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., led six other House Republicans in introducing a bill Dec. 18 that would increase congressional oversight of exports of advanced AI chips to China and other “countries of concern.”