A New York City-based electronics store was fined $5.4 million by CBP and ordered to forfeit more than $460,000 after it allegedly gave false export information to a freight forwarder and breached record-keeping rules, the Bureau of Industry and Security said last week.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., President-elect Donald Trump’s reported choice to be secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., Trump's selection to be national security adviser, have played active roles on export controls and sanctions while serving in Congress.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week updated its “Don’t Let This Happen To You” guidance with new summaries and case examples of past export control investigations. The guidance now includes new case summaries of violations involving a Russia-related procurement network; a criminal case where export-controlled items were smuggled outside the U.S. and used in an assassination plot; a penalty against a semiconductor wafer manufacturing company for shipments to a party on the Entity List; violations of BIS antiboycott regulations; and more. “Exporters are encouraged to review the publication, which provides useful illustrations of the type of conduct that gets companies and universities in trouble,” BIS said.
The Commerce Department sent a letter to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ordering it to stop shipments of advanced semiconductors to certain Chinese customers, including 7 nanometer chips or others of “more advanced designs,” Reuters reported Nov. 9. The letter specifically orders TSMC to stop shipments, beginning Nov. 11, destined for Chinese customers of chips that power artificial intelligence accelerator and graphics processing units, the report said.
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The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York this month denied a request from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. to help the company obtain access to certain discovery documents that are restricted by the Bureau of Industry and Security. Judge Cheryl Pollak said that while DOJ marked hundreds of thousands of documents at a lower level of classification than BIS, which would give Huawei greater access to the records, the documents are "still subject to further review by BIS" (United States v. Huawei Technologies, E.D.N.Y. # 18-00457).
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is expected to begin suspending production of AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers for its Chinese customers beginning Nov. 11, the Financial Times reported last week.
The Bureau of Industry and Security and its technical advisory committees should do more public outreach to make sure companies are aware of important export control updates sometimes buried in Federal Register notices, a BIS committee heard last week. That outreach is especially critical for companies working with industrial chemical processing equipment, a committee member and industry lawyer said, which has commercial uses but is increasingly drawing BIS scrutiny for its military capabilities, including in chemical weapons.
U.S. mobile phone parts producer Lumentum is under investigation by the Bureau of Industry and Security and DOJ for potentially violating U.S. export controls against Huawei, according to corporate filings.
The Bureau of Industry and Security again renewed a temporary denial order on Russia's Rossiya Airlines, saying the company has continued to illegally operate planes in violation of U.S. export controls, including on flights between Russia and China and Russia and Kyrgyzstan. The agency renewed the denial order for one year from Nov. 5. BIS first suspended the export privileges of the airline in May 2022 (see 2205200008) and has renewed the order multiple times. The order blocks Rossiya from participating in transactions subject to the Export Administration Regulations.