The U.K. High Court of Justice on March 27 ruled that VTB Commodites, the commodities wing of sanctioned bank VTB Bank, doesn't have "any right of redemption" in escrow payments in a dispute over the ownership of vacuum gas oil (VGO) cargo.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month granted the U.S. motion for forfeiture of about $17 million from Iraqi airline Al-Naser Airlines, representing the amount of laundered payments involved in the company's scheme to evade export controls and sanctions by "illicitly procuring U.S.-origin aircraft for the benefit of an Iranian airline [Mahan Air]." The court said that the government "fulfilled its notice obligations" prior to a forfeiture and that the complaint against the airline's funds contains verified allegations that "establish the facts necessary to support a civil forfeiture" (U.S. v. $3,435,935 of Funds From Al-Naser Airlines, D.D.C. # 15-01687).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade reassigned 27 cases from various judges to new Judges Joseph Laroski and Lisa Wang. Chief Judge Mark Barnett reassigned 17 cases from Judges Claire Kelly, Timothy Reif, Jennifer Choe-Groves, Timothy Stanceu, Gary Katzmann, Leo Gordon, M. Miller Baker and Richard Eaton to Laroski, and 10 cases from Kelly, Reif, Katzmann, Gordon, Eaton and Thomas Aquilino to Wang.
The Commerce Department "abused its discretion" by using a "bright-line rule to reject" Jindal Poly Films' Section III affiliation questionnaire in the 2021 countervailing duty administrative review on polyethylene terephthalate film, sheet and strip from India, the exporter charged in a complaint filed at the Court of International Trade March 27 (Jindal Poly Films v. U.S., CIT # 24-00053).
The Commerce Department last week issued new antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, which, most notably, lifted the prohibition on the consideration of transnational subsidies in CVD cases (see 2403210070).
World Trade Organization members at the March 20-22 meeting of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Committee reviewed the agreement on the application of SPS measures and "addressed a high number of trade concerns," the WTO said.
The Council of the EU on March 27 appointed Stephane Gervasoni and Dean Spielmann, respectively, a judge and advocate-general to the EU Court of Justice, the council announced. Gervasoni previously served on the EU General Court; Spielman is a past president of the European Court of Human Rights. The council also reappointed Thomas von Danwitz and Ineta Ziemele judges and Jean Richard de la Tour an advocate-general of the Court of Justice. All appointments were issued under the court's 2024 partial renewal, for terms running Oct. 7, 2024, through Oct. 6, 2030.
The National Courts Building -- home of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- didn't receive U.S. Postal Service mail March 20-22. As a result, the court clarified in a March 26 notice that deadlines for nonelectronic filings and submission due March 20-22 and submitted via mail "will be deemed as timely filed if received on Monday, March 25, 2024. All other deadlines are unaffected."
The U.S. filed a civil forfeiture suit March 26 in a New York district court against two New York City apartments purchased for $14 million with the "proceeds from an international corruption scheme," DOJ announced. The apartments are subject to forfeiture due to "violations of federal money laundering statutes," the department said.