The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 10 people and one company involved in illegal Mexican drug trafficking, including precursor chemicals used in fentanyl. Those designated have ties to Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel, OFAC said, and the measures follow a series of similar sanctions related to the group in recent months (see 2305090022, 2304140051 and 2301300010).
Japan and South Korea signed a “memorandum of cooperation” on export controls last week to better collaborate around the trade measures, according to an unofficial translation of a July 11 news release from Japan’s trade ministry. As part of the memorandum, both sides agreed to hold export control policy dialogues on a “regular basis,” look to “enhance their export control systems and operations while referring to the other's export control systems,” and “take appropriate measures, including reviewing their respective export control systems and operations.”
DOJ this week indicted Gal Luft, former co-director of a Maryland think tank, on charges related to “multiple international criminal schemes,” including arms trafficking and violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. The agency said Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who worked at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, for “years” worked as a Chinese agent to “advance the interests” of the Chinese government, including by acting as a middleman in a range of illegal weapons and oil deals.
The U.S. should bar Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, from entering the U.S. later this year because of his placement on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List, lawmakers said this week. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said they are concerned the Hong Kong official could visit California in November as the U.S. hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which includes China as a member. They said the State Department should make a “clear announcement that human rights violator John Lee will not be invited to APEC, in accordance with U.S. sanctions law.”
President Joe Biden this week renewed a national emergency authorizing certain sanctions related to Hong Kong. The White House said "recent actions taken by the People’s Republic of China to fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy" continue to threaten U.S. national security. The sanctions were renewed for another year from July 14.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on July 11 updated the Specially Designated Nationals List entry for Andrey Nikolayevich Ivanov, a Wagner Group official who has helped the sanctioned Russian private military company in weapons deals, mining activities and more. OFAC sanctioned Ivanov in June (see 2306270056).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Serbian official Aleksandar Vulin, who has been “implicated” in transnational organized crime, illegal drug operations and “misuse of public office.” Vulin, director of Serbia’s Security Information Agency, worked with U.S.-sanctioned Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic by helping him move illegal arms shipments across the country’s border, and has also used his position to support Russia and give the country “a platform to further its influence in the region.”
American universities and research labs should make sure they’re screening against a new Defense Department list of Chinese, Russian and Iranian institutions that have “elevated risks,” Crowell & Mooring said in a July 11 client alert. The list, published by DOD June 30, includes more than 45 entities that “have been confirmed as engaging in problematic activity,” including behavior that increases the risk that DOD-funded research could be “misappropriated to the detriment of national or economic security.”
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Freight forwarders are urging shippers to enroll in a government-run cargo screening program before the end of October, when their air freight will no longer benefit from an exemption for cargo deemed ”impracticable to screen.” So far, “very few” shippers are enrolled in the program, said Brandon Fried of the Airforwarders Association, sparking fear of export delays or potential compliance violations by shippers unaware of the impending change.