Maurel & Prom received a specific license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control that authorizes certain activities involving Venezuela’s state-owned energy company Petroleos de Venezuela, the Paris-headquartered oil company announced May 6.
The U.S., the U.K. and Australia this week sanctioned Russian national Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, a leader of the Russia-based LockBit ransomware group, which the Office of Foreign Assets Control labeled “one of the most active ransomware groups in the world.”
The Commerce Department has revoked export licenses used by Intel and Qualcomm to sell certain semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported May 7. The report said the companies used the licenses to sell chips for Huawei’s laptops and mobile phones. A Commerce spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but told the Financial Times that the agency “continuously” assesses its export controls, and “as part of this process, as we have done in the past, we sometimes revoke export licenses.”
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The U.S. will struggle to compete technologically with China unless it continues to loosen trade barriers around sensitive technologies for a broader range of allies outside just the U.K. and Australia, Mike Gallagher, a former member of Congress, said this week.
Sullivan & Cromwell last week announced that it's creating a national security practice focusing on economic sanctions, anti-money laundering laws, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigations, foreign investment regulations, export controls and import restrictions.
Samuel Moss last week left his position as an attorney adviser with the Treasury Department, he announced on LinkedIn. At Treasury since 2019, Moss worked on issues related to sanctions and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. He didn’t say where he would be working next.
Houston residents Muzzamil Zaidi and Asim Mujtaba Naqvi pleaded guilty last week for their role in a scheme to send money to Iran without permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ announced.
A bipartisan group of four House members introduced a bill last week they said would close an export control loophole that has allowed China to access advanced U.S. computing chips remotely.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week removed the Swiss branch of Russia-headquartered bank Sberbank from the agency’s Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List, which lists entities operating in certain sanctioned sectors of the Russian economy. OFAC didn’t release more information.