Senior State Department official Brian Nichols met with staff members from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Dec. 6 to seek their input on U.S. sanctions policy toward Venezuela, according to a State Department spokesperson.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 15 Mexican people and two companies linked to the Beltran Leyva Organization, one of the world’s “most powerful” drug trafficking groups. The designations were announced during a trip by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Mexico City, where she discussed strengthening U.S.-Mexican efforts to counter fentanyl trafficking, and came after the agency launched a new, multi-agency Counter-Fentanyl Strike Force that it said will improve how the U.S. targets drug traffickers with sanctions and civil and criminal penalties.
The Bureau of Industry and Security's addition of 42 entities to the Entity List this week “sends a clear message” that the U.S. and its allies “are watching and will act forcefully” in response to Russian export control evasion, BIS official Thea Kendler said. “Our controls are in place to protect the national security of the United States, and bad actors that violate them will be held accountable.”
New analysis from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology includes a table of more than 100 types of semiconductors and whether they’re subject to U.S. export licensing requirements. CSET also said a new red flag recently published by the Bureau of Industry and Security could cause foundries to ask more questions of customers seeking to produce advanced chips.
The U.S. charged Belgian national Hans Maria De Geetere this week in two separate indictments for allegedly helping to illegally export "military-grade technology" from the U.S. to end-users in China and Russia, DOJ said. The agency said the business owner tried to procure more than $2 million worth of illegal exports from undercover government agents, and told one Commerce Department agent that a shipment was destined for Belgium when it was actually meant for Hong Kong.
China's stranglehold on minerals used in electric vehicle battery-making, and their head start on making quality, affordable EVs makes U.S. and European firms anxious, panelists said at a Georgetown Business School webinar on the future of auto value chains.
A dozen House Democrats, led by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., recently introduced a bill that asks the Biden administration to coordinate with Mexico to increase outbound inspections by CBP on the land border with Mexico, with the aim of reducing the number of guns smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico.
Four Republican senators have called on the Commerce Department to reverse its decision to remove China’s Institute of Forensic Science from the Entity List, saying the easing of trade sanctions on the scientific lab was premature.
The State Department is offering up to a $7 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Artem Aleksandrovich Uss, a Russian national who allegedly tried to violate U.S. export controls and sanctions. The agency said Uss used German industrial equipment company Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH to illegally export millions of dollars worth of military and sensitive dual-use technologies from the U.S. to Russia. He was also accused of using the U.S. financial system for payments related to the smuggling of millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 11 companies and eight people connected to the Alexander Lukashenko-led government in Belarus and what OFAC said is its “brutal suppression” of civil society, corruption and complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The designations target various state-controlled firms and others supporting the Lukashenko regime.