The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision upending the Chevron principle of deferring to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes requires a more demanding review of the Office of Foreign Assets Control's use of the Global Magnitsky Act and International Emergency Economic Powers Act, sanctioned Mir Rahman Rahmani and his son, Hafi Ajmal Rahmani, argued (Mir Rahman Rahmani v. Janet Yellen, D.D.C. # 24-00285).
OFAC sanction activity
The Office of Foreign Assets Control urged a federal court late last month to dismiss the sole remaining claim in a lawsuit challenging the agency’s sanctioning of two former Afghan government officials for corruption.
Congress, federal agencies and state bar associations should work together on new regulations to ensure U.S. lawyers aren't enabling Russia-related sanctions evasion, Stanford Law School lecturer Erik Jensen and a host of law students recommended in a recent report.
Trade lawyers said that recent legislation expanding the statute of limitations on sanctions violations from five to 10 years comes with clear expectations: costlier and longer sanctions investigations.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged four Iranian nationals -- Hossein Harooni, Reza Kazemifar, Komeil Baradaran Salmani and Alireza Shafie Nasab -- for allegedly conducting cyber intrusions on U.S. government and private entities, including the Treasury and State departments, defense contractors and two New York-based companies, DOJ announced.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on April 19 partially dismissed a lawsuit from sanctioned individuals Mir Rahman Rahmani and Hafi Ajmal Rahmani and over two dozen of their companies challenging their sanctions listing for their alleged role in a corruption scheme that swiped millions of dollars from U.S. contracts in Afghanistan (Mir Rahman Rahmani v. Janet Yellen, D.D.C. # 24-00285).
Jason Prince, former chief counsel for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has joined Akin Gump's economic sanctions practice, the law firm announced April 3. Prince was most recently a sanctions and export controls lawyer with Crowell & Moring after leaving OFAC in 2022.
The D.C. U.S. District Court on March 11 dismissed a lawsuit from a senior Democratic Republic of Congo elections official challenging his sanctions designation, saying the listing wasn't "arbitrary or capricious" and that due process laws weren't violated.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on March 12 affirmed a federal D.C. court's dismissal of Venezuelan national Samark Jose Lopez Bello's suit against his designation as a narcotics trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Samark Jose Lopez Bello v. Andrea M. Gacki, D.C. Cir. # 21-01727).
The U.S. this week charged Hossein Hatefi Ardakani and Gary Lam with export violations after DOJ said they helped illegally procure hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of U.S. and foreign-made components for Iran. Along with the indictment, the two were sanctioned by the Treasury Department for using companies across several countries to buy parts for Iran’s unmanned drone program.