A former North Korean official serving in Thailand, Myong Ho Ri, was charged with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions, bank fraud and money laundering, DOJ announced.
The Court of International Trade in an opinion made public April 16 sent back the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available against exporter Garg Tube Exports in the 2018-19 review of the antidumping duty order on welded carbon steel standard pipes and tubes from India.
Israel's Supreme Court earlier this month overturned a lower court decision that ordered Mizrahi Tefahot Bank to transfer a donation Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich sought to make to Israeli humanitarian group ZAKA Search and Rescue, according to Israeli newspaper Globes. The bank refused to process the transaction, which totaled over $213,000, due to the risk of EU and U.K. sanctions being levied against the bank for circumvention of sanctions on Abramovich.
The U.S. last week transferred thousands of weapons and rounds of ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces that were confiscated from unflagged vessels en route to Yemen from Iran as part of a civil forfeiture action, DOJ announced on April 9. The shipment included "over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, and RPG-7s, and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition."
Chinese exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to "re-visit and question" the Commerce Department's basis for its non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings. The exporter noted that the policy "has reigned for over twenty years without serious legal challenge," arguing that the appellate court has never directly reckoned with the policy's legality and that it's "high time" for such a review (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2245).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 5 that the Commerce Department properly countervailed the Port of Incheon program in South Korea. Filing a response to respondent Hyundai Steel Co., the government said that key Federal Circuit precedent -- AK Steel Corp. v. U.S. -- controls in this instance in that the agency wasn't required to consider Hyundai's construction costs in building the port (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1100).
David Laufman, former chief of DOJ’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, is retiring, he announced on LinkedIn last week. Laufman was most recently a partner with Wiggin and Dana (see 1905140075) after leaving DOJ in 2018, where he oversaw the agency’s export control and sanctions investigations and prosecutions.
The U.K. High Court of Justice last week said it has jurisdiction to hear a nearly $10 billion dispute between Russian aircraft companies and the owners, lessors and financing banks of those aircraft leased to Russia.
Two Russian nationals living in Florida pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act by illegally shipping aviation technology to Russian end users, DOJ announced April 4.