BIS Launching New Field Office, Sending More Officers Abroad
The Bureau of Industry and Security is using recently received funding to expand its U.S. field offices and send more officers overseas, said Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top enforcement official. Axelrod said BIS soon will launch a field office in Phoenix and has sent export control officers to the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki and the American Institute of Taiwan in Taipei. BIS also recently sent its first intelligence analyst abroad to work with the Canadian Border Services Agency.
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The Phoenix office will be the agency’s ninth “full” field office, Axelrod said. BIS wanted to send a “full complement of agents there” because of the “region’s growing semiconductor manufacturing presence, and the important role this technology plays for our U.S. national security,” Axelrod said last week during the BIS annual update conference. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation announced in 2020 it planned to build a new chip factory in Arizona (see 2005150033).
He also said the funding has allowed BIS to “expand our international partnerships,” including in Helsinki, Taiwan and Canada. The agency last month announced an initiative with Canada to strengthen collaboration on Russia-related export controls and met with EU officials to lay “groundwork” for a U.S.-EU enforcement cooperation strategy. “These efforts are already producing results,” Axelrod said, adding that BIS, Canada and Europe have seen “surges in end-use checks and coordinated detentions and investigations.”
BIS officers already overseas have been working on outreach and compliance training for industry, Axelrod said. Since the agency introduced its new Russia export controls, export control officers have trained more than 1,500 U.S. and international companies, he said, and have visited more than 500 American companies that have a history of exporting to Russia.
“We’ve been working hard to educate the exporting community about the Russia controls, our philosophy being that we’d rather deter violations on the front end than enforce on the back end after a violation has occurred,” Axelrod said.