The U.K. on June 14 corrected two entries under its Russia sanctions regime, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation announced. OFSI added a phone number for the financial services company Central Counterparty National Clearing Centre and corrected the address for LLC Kompaniya AMG.
A group of European countries not in the EU aligned with two recent sanctions decisions from the bloc pertaining to Russia and its war in Ukraine.
The Group of Seven (G7) nations agreed last week at their summit in Apulia, Italy, to use interest from frozen Russian assets to finance about $50 billion in loans to Ukraine.
The U.S. government is sanctioning four people with links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), including members of an ISIS-linked human smuggling network, the State and Treasury departments announced last week.
The State Department last week labeled the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a Sweden-based neo-Nazi group, and three of its leaders as specially designated global terrorists.
Multinational companies conducting internal sanctions investigations are facing a range of challenges interviewing employees due to a rising “divergence” among different governments’ sanctions regimes, Baker McKenzie said in a June client alert. Sanctions investigations “require a nuanced understanding of the applicable and often multi-faceted sanctions laws” across the U.S., Germany, the U.K. and other European nations, the law firm said. Investigators, for example, may face hurdles from data protection laws in the EU, and they may need to take into account “cultural norms and language barriers” when conducting cross-border interviews. “Cultural customs may require the interviewer to conform to cultural norms,” the firm said, “meaning that interpretation of non-verbal employee behavior for example, should be modulated accordingly.”
The next administration should look to raise criminal penalties for trade theft, broaden the scope of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and refocus its export controls on military technologies to better compete with China, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said this week. ITIF also said the U.S. should push for a new “techno-economic alliance” of key trading partners and develop a new multilateral export control regime focused on semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
The EU General Court on June 12 rejected Russian investment fund VEB.RF's application to be removed from the bloc's Russia sanctions regime, according to an unofficial translation. The European Council sanctioned the financial institution for helping undermine the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine and providing material support to "Russian decision-makers responsible for the annexation of Crimea or the destabilization of Eastern Ukraine."
The EU General Court on June 12 rejected Syrian businessman Issam Shammout's challenge to his designation under the bloc's Syria sanctions regime. Shammout, an executive for airline company Cham Wings Airlines and the Shammout Group, was sanctioned due to his position as a "leading businessperson operating in Syria."
Sergey Nefedov of Anchorage and Mark Shumovich of Bellevue, Washington, were charged June 11 with conducting a scheme to illegally export nearly $500,000 worth of snowmobilers and associated parts from the U.S. to Russia, DOJ announced.