The U.K. on Oct. 3 revised the addresses for Embers of an Empire and Rampage Productions under its domestic counterterrorism sanctions and removed an alias for Europaisch-Iranische Handelsbank under its Iran (nuclear) sanctions regime.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned nearly 40 people and entities with ties to networks helping to buy sensitive goods and technology for Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, along with its missile and military aircraft production efforts.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week fined British Virgin Islands-based company Hallewell Ventures and its owner, Albert Avdolyan, $374,474 for violating sanctions against Russia. BIS said Hallewell illegally reexported a Bombardier Global 7500 jet from the Maldives to Russia without a license.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is rolling back a Biden-era interim final rule that increased restrictions on firearms exports, the agency said in a final rule effective Sept. 30. BIS said it decided that the rule should be “rescinded in its entirety” after hearing from U.S. firearms manufacturers that the controls “would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost sales.”
China on Sept. 25 added three U.S. companies to its Unreliable Entity List for arms sales to Taiwan and three others to its Export Control List because they “endanger” Chinese national security, the Ministry of Commerce said.
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., urged three government watchdog offices to investigate whether two Trump administration officials had conflicts of interest while advocating for the U.S. to sell advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.
Taiwan is probing the business credentials of a Taiwanese company added to the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List earlier this month (see 2509120077), Taiwan's International Trade Administration said, according to an unofficial translation. The company, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, is a "representative office of a Hong Kong company in Taiwan," and an "investigation revealed that the representative office does not possess import and export qualifications," Taiwan said. "The Ministry of Economic Affairs will further verify whether the representative office's actual operations are consistent with its original application."
The Treasury Department officially published a rule this week delaying the effective date of new regulations that were set to make investment advisers subject to anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing requirements. The original final rule, which was issued in August 2024 and scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2026 (see 2408290024), will now apply starting Jan. 1, 2028. Treasury previewed the delay in July (see 2507240021).
The U.K. on Sept. 22 removed Tatiana Evtushenkova -- director of the venture capital firm Redline Capital U.K. and member of the board of directors for Redline Capital Management -- from its Russia sanctions list. The U.K. originally sanctioned Evtushenkova for her ties to Russian businessman Vladimir Evtushenkov. The country didn't provide a reason for the delisting.
The Commerce Department’s spring 2025 regulatory agenda for the Census Bureau includes a new mention of a proposed rule that could require exporters to report the country of origin for certain foreign-produced goods. Census said it will propose a new conditional data element for “country of origin” when the foreign indicator is selected in the Electronic Export Information filed in the Automated Export System. The rule also will propose “remedial changes” to the Foreign Trade Regulations to “improve clarity and to correct errors.” Census had hoped to issue the rule in July. The agency has been studying alternative ways to collect the country of origin information after receiving significant pushback from companies and trade groups that said a new reporting requirement would lead to costly compliance challenges (see 2203160026, 2301230008, 2309130002 and 2403270056).