OFAC sanction activity

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned two people and three entities in Russia for helping to transfer weapons and other military items from North Korea, including shipments of mortars, military communications equipment and aviation parts.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control is updating the scope of an Iran-related general license to limit the computing power threshold for laptops, tablets and other personal computing devices that can be exported or reexported to Iran. The agency also revised its Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations to make “additional conforming changes.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned two people and three entities in Russia for helping to transfer weapons and other military items from North Korea, including shipments of mortars, military communications equipment and aviation parts.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Ali Yagoub Gibril and Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed, two military officers with the Rapid Support Forces, a warring group that has contributed to conflict in Sudan. OFAC designated Gibril for being the RSF Central Darfur commander and Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed for being an RSF major general and the group’s head of operations. The agency said RSF began attacks in North Darfur last month, which have “caused dozens of civilian casualties, including children.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned three Nicaragua-based entities for their ties to Russia or for earning revenue for President Daniel Ortega’s regime. The designations target the Training Center of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (RTC) in Managua, a subdivision of the Russian government’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as Compania Minera Internacional, Sociedad Anonima (COMINTSA) and Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua, Sociedad Anonima (Capital Mining), gold companies that generate revenue for the government.

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Flywire, a U.S.-headquartered global payments company, may have violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran or Syria, it told the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week designated Russian national Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Beloglazovand and three of his companies for their involvement in a scheme to help Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska evade U.S. sanctions. OFAC said the scheme was meant to unfreeze more than $1.5 billion worth of shares belonging to Deripaska.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control soon will make a range of changes to its reporting, procedures and penalties regulations, including one that will require electronic-only filings of certain documents and others that will add or clarify reporting requirements for certain blocked property or rejected transactions. The agency also clarified its definitions for “transaction” and “U.S. persons” after public commenters told OFAC they were unclear, clarified the types of information that must be reported for rejected transitions, and more.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control alerted users of its new Sanctions List Service (see 2405060043) that it made a correction to the “namespace information in the SDN.XML and CONSOLIDATED.XML files.” The notice includes information on how the namespace was changed.