The U.K. on Sept. 10 added three entries to its Russian sanctions regime and seven people and entities to its Iran sanctions list, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation announced in a pair of notices.
The U.S. this week sanctioned nine Mexicans and 26 Mexico-based entities with ties to a network that steals fuel to generate revenue for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, a sanctioned Mexican drug trafficking group. The network has generated “tens of millions of dollars” for the cartel through fuel theft from Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, including by illegally drilling taps into fuel pipelines, stealing from refineries and hijacking tanker trucks, the Treasury Department said.
The EU announced this week that it’s amending its dual-use export control list by adding and removing certain items, changing certain control parameters and revising technical definitions and descriptions. The changes reflect updates made by multilateral export control regimes during 2023, the European Commission said, including at the Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Chemical Weapons Convention. The commission noted that these latest changes are “restricted in number because of the difficulties in the regimes’ proceedings,” alluding to the fact that Russia remains a member of Wassenaar and can veto new proposals (see 2405300063). The revisions will take effect one day after they’re published in the Official Journal of the EU.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week updated its guidance on applying for deemed export licenses, which people or companies must obtain before sharing a controlled item, software or technology with a foreign person on U.S. soil if a license would normally be required for that person's most recent country of citizenship or permanent residence. The guidance outlines the type of information applicants must submit, the information BIS takes into account when reviewing those licenses, and the set of conditions that the agency said are “standard” for approved licenses. A list of license condition best practices includes a reminder that approved applicants must annually verify to BIS that the foreign person has a “required work authorization” or that the foreign person has left the country.
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The House approved several export control-related bills late Sept. 9, including the Remote Access Security Act, which is designed to close a loophole that has allowed China to use cloud service providers to access advanced U.S. computing chips remotely (see 2409040046).
U.S. computing chip manufacturers need to do more to stem the flow of their export-controlled products to Russia’s defense industrial base, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Sept. 10.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced a bill Sept. 9 that would end all U.S. petroleum cooperation and petroleum-related trade with Venezuela until that country's ruler, Nicolas Maduro, concedes he lost Venezuela's recent presidential election.
The House passed a bill Sept. 9 that would cut off top Chinese leaders and their family members from the U.S. financial system if China takes military action against Taiwan.
The Netherlands last week said it expanded its export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing tools, imposing new license requirements on certain deep ultraviolet lithography equipment that can be used to make high-end chips. The new control, effective Sept. 7, is meant to restrict equipment that can be used to make chips with “advanced military applications,” the Dutch government said, which “has implications for the Netherlands’ security interests.”