The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned a Lebanon-based organization and its leader for providing support for Hezbollah’s operations while acting under the guise of an environmental organization. The entity, Green Without Borders, was created in 2013 to protect Lebanon’s “natural environment” but is a “cover” for Hezbollah’s activities in southern Lebanon along the Blue Line, where Green Without Borders has outposts that are staffed by Hezbollah officials and underground warehouses and munitions storage tunnels that allow Hezbollah members to train. The agency also sanctioned Zuhair Subhi Nahla, the leader of Green Without Borders.
The U.S. this week sanctioned three entities for their involvement in a sanctions evasion network that facilitates arms deals between Russia and North Korea. The designations target Limited Liability Company Verus, Defense Engineering Limited Liability Partnership and Versor S.R.O, which all have ties to sanctioned Slovakian businessman Ashot Mkrtychev. The Treasury Department said Mkrtychev is the president of Versor, founder and owner of Verus and the sole director of Defense Engineering, and has worked with Russian and North Korean officials for “potential plans” to transfer more than two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions to Russia in exchange for various raw materials and commodities to North Korea.
American building materials supplier Construction Specialties Inc. (CS) reached a $660,594 settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control this week for allegedly violating sanctions against Iran. OFAC said the company’s United Arab Emirates subsidiary, Construction Specialties Middle East (CSME), illegally reexported more than $1 million worth of construction materials to Iran and falsified trade documents to hide their destination.
The Bureau of Industry and Security clarified rules surrounding two deemed export scenarios in a new advisory opinion issued in June and released publicly this week. The opinion said U.S.-based subsidiaries are allowed to release certain controlled technologies to their foreign parent companies’ employees -- when they are on temporary assignment in the U.S. -- if the American subsidiary already has an export license to ship the item to its parent company. BIS also said the U.S. subsidiary can use its export license to ship covered items to its parent company if the items were developed by employees on temporary assignment in the U.S.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority’s annual report last month included a more “pronounced” focus on sanctions compliance, including details on the government’s ongoing “assessments” of companies’ compliance programs, Baker McKenzie said in an August client alert. The firm said financial institutions operating in the U.K. should be aware that they may need to report potential sanctions violations to the FCA as well as to the country’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, and firms should “re-review their sanctions compliance policies and procedures” due to the FCA’s “focus on the effectiveness of a bank’s financial crime systems and controls.”
China’s recently imposed export controls on gallium and germanium (see 2307050018) -- two metals used to produce semiconductors -- were for legitimate national security reasons, Beijing said this week, rebuking comments from U.S. officials and lawmakers who have said the restrictions have no justification (see 2307060053). In an Aug. 9 post on Chinese social media site Weixin, the National Security Ministry said the country's national security concerns stem from an incident in 2009, when an employee working for a global mining company in China tried to access “detailed technical analysis of dozens of Chinese iron and steel enterprises and accurate parameters of each production process.”
A new House bill would require the U.S. to maintain certain sanctions against Iraq even if the administration ends the “applicable declared national emergency” that authorizes those sanctions. The legislation was introduced Aug. 11 by Rep. Elijah Crane, R-Ariz., and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control delayed the retirement of its “PIP, DEL, and SDALL.ZIP sanctions list file formats” until on or about Sept. 18, the agency said in a notice this week. OFAC was scheduled to retire the formats this month (see 2307070012). The notice includes a complete list of files that the agency will retire. The Sanctions List Search tool “will not be affected by these changes."
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week updated two entries on its Specially Designated Nationals List. The changes update identifying information for Singapore-based Unicious Energy, which was sanctioned in February for helping sanctioned company Triliance Petrochemical sell Iranian petroleum products, and Behnam Shahriyari, an official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
A U.S.-Iran agreement to unfreeze nearly $6 billion in Iranian funds in exchange for five imprisoned Americans will be carried out with “significant oversight” and provide Tehran with no sanctions relief, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Aug. 15.