Akin added three partners from Hughes Hubbard to its Washington, D.C., office, the firm announced. Ryan Fayhee, a former national security official at DOJ, will advise clients on sanctions and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. reviews, incident response and compliance best practices. Roy Liu will focus on U.S.-China trade matters, sanctions, export controls, customs cases and CFIUS proceedings, and Tyler Grove will focus on sanctions and trade regulations.
The U.K. on July 17 added 13 people and one entity to its Russia sanctions list. The people include government officials and ministers and others responsible for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. The lone entity is the Federal State Budget Educational Institution Artek International Children's Center. In the notice, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation also amended the entries for nine people and one entity.
A recently introduced House bill with bipartisan support could allow the State Department to give monetary awards for information on violators of U.S. or U.N. sanctions. The Sanctions Evasion Whistleblower Rewards Act of 2023, introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and co-sponsored by Reps. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.; Pat Fallon, R-Texas; and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., would authorize the State Department to hand out awards for information relating to people or entities violating U.S. export control laws or conducting “significant financial transactions” that violate U.S. or U.N. sanctions. The text of the bill was released this week.
A bipartisan bill that would require a pilot program to identify and predict vessels that could be evading sanctions or export controls was introduced last week by Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and James Lankford, R-Okla.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published two sets of previously issued general licenses in the Federal Register, including licenses under its Burma Sanctions Regulations, Syria Sanctions Regulations, Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations and Venezuela Sanctions Regulations. The full texts of the licenses are available in the notices.
The Biden administration should wait to place new export controls on the semiconductor industry until it adequately assesses the impact of its existing restrictions, the Semiconductor Industry Association said this week. The U.S. chip industry should be able to continue accessing the China market, SIA said, warning that “repeated steps” to “impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”
The Biden administration’s potential outbound investment screening program could feature a combination of notification requirements and, in some cases, outright prohibitions on American investments in China, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said this week. She also offered the administration’s strongest comments to date in support of a new investment screening regime, saying there’s a “good chance” the U.S. issues the rules.
The Bureau of Industry and Security added four spyware companies in Greece, Hungary, Ireland and North Macedonia to the Entity List for their role in cyber activities that threaten the “privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.” The additions, outlined in a final rule effective June 18, impose license requirements for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations. BIS will review license applications under a presumption of denial.
The Commerce Department published its spring 2023 regulatory agenda for the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Census Bureau, including new rules that will add more entities to the Entity List and finalize new export filing requirements.
Hughes Hubbard this month announced attorneys Jan Dunin-Wasowicz and Sean Reilly will lead its Sanctions, Export Controls and Anti‑Money Laundering Practice Group. Dunin-Wasowicz, based in Paris, will oversee EU sanctions matters, while Reilly, a former Commerce Department official based in Washington, will oversee U.S. issues. Hughes Hubbard Chair Ted Mayer said the firm wanted to ensure the practice’s leadership includes “individuals who possess not only regulatory expertise but also a background in investigations.”