A Georgia businessman, a former Honduran government official and a former Florida resident were charged with allegedly participating in a scheme to pay and hide bribes to Honduran government officials to "secure contracts to provide uniforms and other goods" to the Honduran National Police, DOJ said.
China issued new export restrictions on four products this week, according to an unofficial translation of a Ministry of Commerce announcement. The four items are cell cloning and gene editing technology for human use, crop hybrid advantage utilization technology, "bulk material handling and transportation technology," and lidar systems.
Informal negotiations on revising the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement rules "are nearing their conclusion," Marco Molina, the Guatemala deputy permanent representative, told members of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body at its Dec. 18 meeting. Molina said the goal is to have a "fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024," according to the WTO.
A Kansas business owner pleaded guilty Dec. 19 for his part in a scheme to violate U.S. export laws by filing false export forms and shipping "sophisticated and controlled" avionics equipment to Russian customers without export licenses, DOJ announced. Cyril Buyanovsky, owner of KanRus Trading Co. also agreed to forfeit over $450,000 worth of avionics equipment along with a $50,000 personal forfeiture. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Turkish duties on a host of U.S. products in retaliation for President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs violate World Trade Organization commitments, a WTO dispute panel ruled Dec. 19. The panel said the duties violate articles I and II of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and also found that the Section 232 duties are not "safeguards."
Japan levied a host of new sanctions on Russia, including a ban on the import of non-industrial Russian diamonds, the Ministry of Finance announced Dec. 15, according to an unofficial translation. The ministry said the import ban will be rolled out "at a later date."
The U.K. on Dec. 15 sanctioned Russia-based Joint Stock Commercial Bank Novikombank. The country's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said the bank conducts business in a sector of "strategic significance" to the Russian government. OFSI also amended the listings for 27 other Russia-related entries.
Charles McGonigal, a former FBI agent in the New York Counterintelligence Division, was sentenced to 50 months in prison for his work with sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced in a Dec. 14 news release. McGonigal in August pleaded guilty to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, including by, following his departure from the FBI, investigating a rival Russian oligarch in return for payments from Deripaska (see 2308160029).
India appealed an April World Trade Organization panel report that said its duties on information and communications technology goods destined to the EU violated India's tariff commitments, the WTO announced Dec. 14 (see 2304170018). The EU, Japan and Taiwan each have brought cases to the WTO to dispute the Indian tariffs, and India filed a similar appeal of Japan's case against the tariffs in May (see 2305250056). The WTO can't address the appeals because it doesn't have a functioning appellate body (see 2311200078).
Chile formally accepted the agreement on fisheries subsidies on Dec. 12, bringing to 53 the number of World Trade Organization members to have accepted the deal, the WTO announced. This number is "nearly half" of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Claudia Sanhueza Riveros, Chile's undersecretary of international economic relations, said the deal "is a very important agreement, especially for countries in the Pacific, where our marine ecosystems are generally being overexploited. It also seeks to address the global challenges we face in terms of the sustainability of our environment and our oceans.”