The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved several sanctions and export control bills Dec. 3, including the Sanctions Lists Harmonization Act, which would require a review of whether individuals or entities included on certain sanctions lists should be included on other sanctions lists (see 2507070022).
The Council of the European Union on Dec. 4 extended its human rights sanctions list for one year, pushing the restrictions to Dec. 8, 2026. The sanctions currently apply to 135 individuals and 37 entities.
The U.K. added three Russian intelligence officers and the Russian intelligence agency to its Russia sanctions list on Dec. 4. Vladimir Lipchenko, Yuriy Sizov and Denis Smolyaninov were sanctioned by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for coordinating "sabotage operations in Ukraine." The intelligence agency is the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, known as GRU.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week renewed and revised the language in a general license that authorizes certain transactions involving Lukoil retail service stations located outside Russia.
The Office of the Federal Register published a correction this week to a Commerce Control List that appeared in the most recent annual revision of the Code of Federal Regulations. It fixes an error in the language that describes certain "materials" controlled in the CCL, including metals and alloys.
The Bureau of Industry and Security again renewed a temporary denial order for Siberian Airlines after saying the Russian airline continues to illegally operate aircraft on flights into and out of Russia. The airline has acted in "blatant disregard for U.S. export controls and the terms of previously issued" denial orders, BIS said, pointing to several recent flights it has operated to and from Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. The agency renewed the order for one year from Dec. 3.
The Trump administration has halted plans to sanction a Chinese spy agency and will refrain from imposing any “major new export controls” on China to avoid disrupting the trade truce reached between the two sides in South Korea earlier this year, the Financial Times reported.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week announced a $7.1 million penalty against a New York-based property management firm for receiving payments from another company owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch and metals industry magnate Oleg Deripaska. OFAC said the New York company, Gracetown, Inc., failed to report the blocked assets to OFAC for 45 months after the agency notified the firm that the payments risked violating U.S. sanctions.
House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said Dec. 4 that he is seeking several changes to a Russia sanctions and tariffs bill that lawmakers are trying to get through Congress this month.
Chris Cook left his role as a trial attorney with the DOJ National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section to join Pratt & Whitney as associate director and counsel for global trade investigations, he announced this week on LinkedIn. Cook first joined DOJ in 2016.