The U.K.'s House of Commons held a debate session titled "Kazakhstan: Anti-corruption Sanctions" Feb. 3 to discuss imposing restrictive measures on bad actors in the Central Asian nation. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the All-Party Parliament Group -- an informal collection of cross-party groups with no official status in Parliament -- said the U.K. should use its global anti-corruption sanctions regime to designate the "kleptocrats" in Kazakhstan. Hodge called for sanctions on 24 individuals, all of whom she said have benefited from the alleged kleptocracy at the heart of the Kazakh government. Many of those individuals are related to the Kazakh president.
The U.K. amended two entries under its Global Anti-Corruption sanctions regime, in a Feb. 8 financial sanctions notice. The amended entries are for Ashraf Said Ahmed Hussein Ali, who has been involved in corruption in South Sudan, and Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who has taken part in the misappropriation of public funds in Equatorial Guinea, the notice said. An asset freeze remains in effect for each.
The EU released information Feb. 8 about the status of its member states' implementation of a regime for the brokering, technical assistance, transit, transfer and control of exports of dual-use items. An EU regulation mandated, among other things, that the member states employ a dual-use export control program, but the European Commission found that only eight nations have either partially or fully implemented the program. Those countries are Belgium, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland. The bloc's largest economies, on the other hand, including France, Germany, Spain and Italy, have not implemented the export controls program.
The White House this week released an updated list of critical and emerging technology categories that are important to national security, including a new subset of “novel, advanced technologies” for each category. The updated list, first issued in 2020 as part of a national strategy to better coordinate agency efforts amid technology competition with China (see 2010150038), will help guide “new and existing efforts to promote U.S. technological leadership,” the White House said. The list could intersect with work being done by the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is crafting export controls over various emerging and foundational technologies as part of the Export Control Reform Act (see 2201280045). Similarly, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. may be more inclined to scrutinize transactions involving sensitive and emerging technologies (see 2112140011).
Although the Commerce and State departments have been able to conduct some export end-use checks during the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said both agencies continue to face challenges scheduling on-site inspections.
The French Court of Cassation requested the European Court of Justice to interpret an element of the EU's sanctions on Iraq. The request comes in a case brought by Dutch air pollution control equipment company Instrubel NV in which a French court found that "preventative attachments" against Montana Management -- a trust fund formerly owned by Saddam Hussein -- were void because Montana hadn't been served. Montana was placed under the EU's Iraq sanctions regime in 2006, an EU Sanctions blog post said. Instead of serving Montana, the Iraqi government was served in the case. The Iraqi government in 2011 took control over the mandate of the Development Fund of Iraq, which the U.N. set up in 2003 to distribute assets seized from the Iraqi regime.
For individuals criminally convicted for the misappropriation of European Union state funds, frozen funds belonging to those individuals relating to the EU's Tunisian sanctions regime can remain frozen after that person has died "until court orders for the recovery of the misappropriated State funds and the payment of fines have been executed," the European Council said in a Feb. 3 regulation. If the deceased individual had not been criminally convicted, then the funds will remain frozen "for a reasonable period of time," the council said. If an action to recover misappropriated funds is brought during that period, the funds will remain frozen until "such action is dismissed or, if it is upheld, until the court’s order for the recovery of the misappropriated funds has been executed."
China objected to the U.S. decision to add 33 Chinese entities to its Unverified List, it said in a Feb. 7 news release. The Bureau of Industry and Security made the additions, which included universities and companies operating in China's technology and electronics sectors, due to its inability to verify the reliability of the entities through end-use checks (see 2202070012). According to an unofficial translation, China's Ministry of Commerce said that the U.S. should immediately correct its perceived wrongdoing and return to mutual beneficial cooperation. MofCom characterized this action, along with the U.S. past export control moves, as tools of "political suppression and economic bullying." A BIS spokesperson dubbed its end-use checks a "core principle" of the agency's export control system.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is adjusting its civil monetary penalties for inflation, the agency said in a notice released Feb. 8. The new amounts include higher maximum penalties for violations of the Trading With the Enemy Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act and the Clean Diamond Trade Act. The agency also updated two references to “one-half the IEEPA maximum CMP from $155,781 to $165,474” and adjusted the recordkeeping CMP amounts in OFAC’s Economic Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines. The changes take effect Feb. 9.
Republican senators urged the Biden administration to get Senate approval for any potential nuclear deal with Iran, or risk Congress overturning the deal at the start of the next administration. The lawmakers, including Jim Risch of Idaho and Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republicans on the Senate’s Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, respectively, said the administration is required to seek Senate approval under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. Any deal reached with Iran not ratified by the Senate “is subject to being reversed, and indeed will likely be torn up, in the opening days of the next Presidential administration, as early as January 2025,” more than 30 senators said in a Jan. 7 letter to the White House. The lawmakers said they will use their “full range of options and leverage available to United States Senators to ensure that you meet those obligations,” and the “implementation of any agreement will be severely if not terminally hampered if you do not.” The White House didn’t comment. The administration last week restored an Iran-related sanctions waiver that it hopes will bring the sides closer to a deal (see 2202070035), which could ease a range of U.S. sanctions against Iran.