DOJ last week announced a set of new charges, arrests and forfeiture proceedings to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The agency announced forfeiture actions involving $2.5 million in luxury properties, arrested two U.S. residents for helping a Russian violate sanctions, charged two sanctioned oligarchs with violating U.S. restrictions and more.
Alexis Early, former partner at King & Spalding, has joined Jenner & Block as a partner in the Washington-based national security and crisis practice. Early's practice focuses on sanctions, trade and export controls, anti-money laundering, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and more, the firm said.
Anden Chow, former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has joined litigation boutique MoloLamken as a partner in New York, the firm announced. Chow worked as an assistant U.S. Attorney for a decade, most recently working on prosecutions into "international financial crime," including "sanctions evasion, asset forfeiture, money laundering, cryptocurrency-related fraud, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations," the firm said.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Exporter Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. and importer C&U Americas brought a suit to the Court of International Trade on Feb. 20 challenging the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on tapered roller bearings from China. The five-count complaint alleges a host of errors in the review, including on Commerce's use of partial adverse facts available (Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00025).
Former Bureau of Industry and Security chief counsel Opher Shweiki, who left the agency earlier this month (see 2402140065), joined Akin Gump as a partner in its Washington office, the firm announced Feb. 20. Akin said Shweiki will add “further depth” to its export controls, sanctions, national security and global investigations team.
The U.S. transferred nearly $500,000 in "forfeited Russian funds" to Estonia in an attempt to provide aid to Ukraine, DOJ announced on Feb. 17. The move, announced at the Munich Security Conference by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Estonian Secretary General Tonis Saar, is "the first of its kind from the United States to a foreign ally for the express purpose of assisting Ukraine," DOJ said.
A Chinese ball bearings exporter asked for another remand of an antidumping duty review on its products after the Commerce Department exchanged its adverse facts available AD rate for one based on neutral facts, saying the department double-counted when constructing its products’ values and wrongly capped its revenue related to Section 301 duties (Shanghai Tainai Bearing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00038).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 20 rejected a Commerce Department scope ruling finding R210-S engines made by Chonging Rato Technology Co. fall within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on vertical shaft engines between 99cc and up to 225cc and parts thereof from China.
Exporter Tau-Ken Temir (TKT) and Kazakhstan's Ministry of Trade and Integration argued in a Feb. 12 reply brief that the Commerce Department doesn't have "essentially total discretion to decide deadlines and acceptance of filings." Responding to claims from the U.S. at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, TKT and the Kazakh ministry said the government didn't claim that any prejudice would have resulted from granting TKT's one-day extension request, which would have absolved the company from missing a filing deadline in a countervailing duty proceeding by 90 minutes (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).