Uzbekistan national and resident Saodat Narzieva sued the Office of Foreign Assets Control and OFAC Director Bradley Smith Dec. 2, saying the agency mistakenly included her in an April 2023 round of Russia-related sanctions, causing her "substantial" harm.
The recent introduction of several bills to restrict foreign sales of computing chips shows that lawmakers are eager to legislate on the issue but haven't yet reached agreement on how to do so, Morgan Lewis trade lawyer Mike Huneke said in an interview.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Dec. 29 that sanctions should be “strictly enforced” to address Turkey’s reported role in helping Russia's oil industry evade Western sanctions. Blumenthal also said that arms sales to Turkey, such as the F-35 fighter, should be “selectively blocked” until Ankara changes its behavior.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 10 people and entities based in Venezuela and Iran that it said are involved in trading and producing unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control removed several people from its sanctions list this week, including Alexandra Buriko, former chief financial officer of Russian state-owned Sberbank, who resigned from the bank after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She sued the Treasury Department last year to be removed from the Specially Designated Nationals List, and that lawsuit remains pending.
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The Trump administration plans to convene early next year to try to better organize its approach to AI diffusion and export controls over AI semiconductors, said Paul Triolo, the technology policy lead at advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group.
Polish authorities arrested four Polish citizens and one Russian citizen for allegedly illegally importing Russian and Belarusian birch plywood in violation of sanctions, the country's Ministry of Finance said Dec. 29, according to an unofficial translation. The ministry said the plywood was imported into Poland "under false declarations of country of origin -- Kazakhstan and Turkey -- to allow for legal trade within the" EU.
China on Dec. 26 sanctioned 20 U.S. defense firms and 10 executives in response to the State Department's approval of a host of arms sales to Taiwan earlier this month (see 2512180008). The designations target several major defense contractors, their subsidiaries and their senior employees, including Northrop Grumman Systems, L3 Harris Marine Services, Boeing, Sierra Technical Services, Red Cat Holdings and others. The sanctions block their assets in China and prohibit them from carrying out transactions with people or companies in China.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has withdrawn a final rule from interagency review that was set to make "revisions" to the Export Administration Regulations for "certain rare earth minerals and strategic metals." The agency sent the rule for interagency review July 10 and it was withdrawn Dec. 22.