A Florida man was charged with conspiring and acting as an agent of the PRC without notification to the Attorney General. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. From as early as 2012, Peng Li, 59 allegedly served as a cooperative contact working at the direction of officers of the Ministry of State Security to obtain information of interest to the PRC government.
A grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, returned an indictment charging a fugitive North Korean national for his involvement in a conspiracy to hack and extort U.S. hospitals and other health care providers, launder the ransom proceeds, and then use these proceeds to fund additional computer intrusions into defense, technology, and government entities worldwide. Rim Jong Hyok worked for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), a military intelligence agency, and participated in the conspiracy to target and hack computer networks of U.S. hospitals and other health care providers, encrypt their electronic files, extort a ransom payment from them, launder those payments, and use the laundered proceeds to hack targets of interest to the North Korean regime.
An Illinois woman was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for conspiring to unlawfully export to Russia defense articles – including thermal imaging riflescopes and night-vision goggles – without a license in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. To conceal her unlawful activities, when Shifrin exported the defense articles to Russia, she listed fictitious sender names and addresses on the packages containing the defense articles, falsely identified the items in the packages as non-export-controlled items such as clothing, and concealed the defense articles in other items such as toolkits and kitchen appliances.
Other OFAC enforccement actions this week targeted ISIS facilitators in several African states, rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Guatemalan human smuggling network, and two members of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and related firms involved in the fentanly trade.
OFAC sanctioned a network of six individuals and five entities based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), involved in the procurement of items supporting the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) ballistic missile and space programs.
All financial institutions at which Russian sovereign assets are located, and that know or should know of such assets, must provide notice of such assets to OFAC no later than August 2, 2024
The Departments of State and Commerce are each issuing separate but complementary proposed rules regarding personal services to foreign defense and intelligence activities. State's review of "defense service" in the ITAR focused on identifying activities of U.S. persons that provide a critical military or intelligence advantage such that they warrant control under the ITAR and are activities that are not currently subject to the ITAR; or are controlled under the ITAR, but the current control language would benefit from additional clarity..
The Bureau of Industry and Security is finalizing amendments to its Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS) regulation as originally proposed on February 7, 2024 with minor technical amendments. This final rule is effective August 21, 2024. This final rule clarifies existing standards and procedures by which BIS may provide Special Priorities Assistance (SPA); revises Schedule I to provide transparency and differentiation between other departments' priorities jurisdiction and the Department of Commerce's jurisdiction; and provides technical edits to reflect certain non-substantive updates since the DPAS regulation was last amended in 2014.
A joint resolution of Congress to void and nullify the Commerce Department's “Revision of Firearms License Requirements” (89 Fed. Reg. 34680) passed out of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs July 11 on a vote of 24 to 23. Sponsored by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn), the motion is a companion to his“Stop the Bureaucratic Ineptitude Shuttering Respectable and Upstanding Lawful Exporters Act” or the “Stop the BIS Rule Act” (HR 8208) introduced in May.
Commerce released two new proposed rules governing military and intelligence end uses and end users, including activities by U.S. persons, as well as amendments to the EAR controls on Foreign-Security End Users (FSEUs) and expanding controls on activities of “U.S. persons.” BIS is proposing amendments to control “support” furnished by “U.S. persons” to identified foreign- security end users. These rules propose to implement the broadest expansion of presidential export control authority since the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) was signed in August 2018.
Industrial Security leadership from Treasury, Commerce, and the DoD testified before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, calling for resources and legislative support as demands on their remit grow The witnesses testified in support of Defense Production Act reauthorization, continued vigilance on outbound and inbound foreign investment, and enhanced resources for trade security at BIS.
July 24 the Bureau of Industy and Security published a Final Rule formalizing the changes to the Export Administration Regulations imposed by Congress in the emergency supplemental appropriation [HR 815] signed into law April 24th. As a result of this new FDP Rule, exporters require a U.S. Government authorization for transfer of these items when produced outside the United States with certain U.S. technology, software, or production equipment when exports are destined to Iran or for use in connection with certain equipment destined to Iran, even when such items were never exported from the United States.
On July 18, 2024, the Bureau of Industry and Security published an interim final rule that revised the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). That rule inadvertently revised language related to recent changes to the Entity List. This document corrects the inadvertent revisions introduced in the July 18, 2024, rule.
Iranian national Saeid Haji Agha Mousaei, 53, made his initial appearance in Chicago federal court following his extradition from the United Kingdom to face charges for his role in a years-long conspiracy to evade U.S. export restrictions and transship advanced U.S. electronic testing technology to Iran using third-party countries. Mousaei and his co-defendants understood export restrictions on U.S.-origin goods to prohibited destinations like Iran and falsely represented to U.S. distributors that their purchases would remain in countries other than Iran, like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Armenia, where the defendants controlled unnamed companies. In reality, after arranging for distributors of U.S.-origin goods to export shipments to the UAE, the defendants allegedly transshipped goods from the UAE to Iran without the required license and in violation of U.S. law.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), today released its Annual Report to Congress for calendar year 2023. The Annual Report highlights key indicators of CFIUS’s activities and provides statistics on transactions that CFIUS evaluated in 2023. For the three-year period from 2021 through 2023, investors from China filed the highest number of notices, accounting for 13.5 percent (115 notices) of total notices, followed by investors from Singapore with 8.4 percent (72 notices) and Canada with 8.1 percent (69 notices). Japan and the United Kingdom round out the top five with 6.5 percent each (56 notices each).
The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today released guidance addressing questions raised by recent legislation that extended the statute of limitations for violations of certain sanctions that the agency administers. As explained in the guidance, OFAC may now commence an enforcement action for civil violations of International Emergency Economic Powers Act- or Trading with Enemy Act-based sanctions prohibitions within 10 years of the latest date of the violation if such date was after April 24, 2019. To match the new statute of limitations period, OFAC anticipates publishing an interim final rule, with an opportunity to provide comment, extending from five years to 10 years the recordkeeping requirements codified at 31 C.F.R. § 501.601.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic imposed sanctions on six US defense contractors, along with five executives in retaliation for sales to Taipei. Sanctioned firms included Anduril Industries, Maritime Tactical Systems, Pacific Rim Defense, AEVEX Aerospace, LKD Aerospace, and Summit Technologies Inc.
The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is providing more detailed updates regarding the status of their applications via the public Licensing Portal. Applicants will now receive one of ten following case statuses to better indicate where their application is in the processing timeline.
The long-awaited Standards Rule has been published by the Commerce Department, revising Export Administration Regulations to facilitate US industry participation in international standards setting bodies. In this rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to revise the scope and the terms used in the EAR to describe “standards-related activities” that are subject to the EAR. As we reported last month [12385] lack of clear guidance from Commerce has chilled come companies' participation for fear of running afoul of export controls.
The United States and Mexico announced the successful a course of remediation to address denials of rights at the RV Fresh Foods facility, which produces guacamole in the state of Michoacán. This case is the first time the United States has used the mechanism in the food manufacturing sector. It is also the first time both the United States and Mexico have identified violations related to the conduct of the petitioning union.