The Commerce Department and DOJ this week launched a new task force to “target illicit actors” and protect critical technologies from being acquired by “nation-state adversaries.” The Disruptive Technology Strike Force -- which will be led by Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security and DOJ’s National Security Division -- will focus on investigating and prosecuting criminal export violations, improving “administrative enforcement” of export controls, coordinating law enforcement actions and “disruption strategies” with U.S. allies and more.
Ian Cohen
Ian Cohen, Deputy Managing Editor, is a reporter with Export Compliance Daily and its sister publications International Trade Today and Trade Law Daily, where he covers export controls, sanctions and international trade issues. He previously worked as a local government reporter in South Florida. Ian graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2017 and lives in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2019.
DOJ this week released its revised criminal corporate enforcement policies for voluntary self-disclosures, outlining new criteria companies must meet to qualify for declinations even in cases where there are aggravating factors. The new updates, which are the “first significant changes” to the Criminal Division’s corporate enforcement policies (CEP) since 2017, offer companies “new, significant, and concrete incentives to self-disclose misconduct,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite said, speaking at Georgetown Law Center. He also said they give companies incentives to “go far above and beyond the bare minimum when they cooperate with our investigations.”
An indictment was unsealed Dec. 12 in a New York district court charging five Russian nationals and two U.S. nationals for their role in a global procurement and money laundering network for the Russian government, DOJ announced. Concurrent with the indictment, the Bureau of Industry and Security issued a 180-day temporary denial order against three of the defendants and two companies for illegally sending controlled exports to Russia as part of the Moscow-led scheme.
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
New guidance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. signals that the committee is preparing to increase its enforcement efforts, law firms said this week. Companies should expect more scrutiny from the committee, firms said, adding that completing and documenting due-diligence before finalizing an investment transaction is growing increasingly important.
The EU is hoping for concrete input from the U.S. by year-end on changes to the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system (see 2210180006), an EU official said, adding member states are growing increasingly impatient about the U.S.’s lack of action. Sabine Weyand, the European Commission’s director-general, also said the discussions within the EU on extending WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS waiver) have become more difficult.
The U.S. this week charged several Chinese nationals, including Chinese government intelligence officers, for their efforts to obstruct a federal prosecution of Huawei and illegally acquire U.S. technology. In one indictment, DOJ charged two Chinese intelligence officers with trying to steal federal prosecution documents relating to the Huawei case. A second indictment charges four Chinese nationals, including three Ministry of State Security (MSS) intelligence officers, for their involvement in a “long-running intelligence campaign” to acquire sensitive U.S. technology, information and assistance.
A U.S. appeals court on July 8 affirmed a 2020 District of Columbia court ruling dismissing FedEx’s lawsuit against the Bureau of Industry and Security, saying the shipping company failed to show BIS acted outside its authority. The court also rejected FedEx’s claims that the agency was using the Export Administration Regulations to apply overly burdensome liability standards on carriers and penalize them even when carriers do not have knowledge of violations.
The Federal Maritime Commission this week approved a $2 million settlement agreement with Hapag-Lloyd for alleged shipping violations involving the company’s detention and demurrage practices. Hapag-Lloyd also agreed to take several steps to improve its billing practices, including posting an updated tariff policy to its website, conducting a “training session” on the FMC’s detention and demurrage rule for all employees involved in billing, and publishing on its website a “complete list of locations that it has authorized to accept empty Hapag-Lloyd containers.”