Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged the Trump administration March 20 to consider further easing sanctions on Syria to help the war-torn country rebuild following last year’s fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation this week sanctioned four current or former Sri Lankan officials for human rights violations and revised an existing entry for a sanctioned Russian business executive.
Senior Bureau of Industry and Security officials haven’t yet been given orders by the Trump administration on several key export control policy issues, including possible plans to soon relax export controls against Russia, multiple Commerce Department officials said last week.
The U.K. opened a record number of sanctions-related investigations during the 2023-24 fiscal year and is expecting to soon issue multiple Russia-related penalties, the country’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said in its annual report published March 21.
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation fined the Russian subsidiary of British law firm Herbert Smith Freehills about $600,000 for violating U.K. sanctions on Russia. The firm was penalized for six payments it made worth over $5 million to sanctioned Russian banks Alfa-Bank JSC, PJSC Sovcombank and PJSC Sberbank.
The U.K. amended the sanctions listing of Red Box Energy Services under its Russia sanctions regime on March 20. The entity's listing now says the company "has been involved" in the Russian energy sector instead of saying it "is involved" in the sector.
The U.K. made several changes to its sanctions list this week for entries involving Russia and Belarus.
Imports into the EU of birch and other types of plywood have proven to be a “major source of revenue” for Russia and Belarus and are frequently being used to evade EU sanctions, the European Commission said in a sanctions alert last week.
President Donald Trump has instructed the Treasury Department to increase sanctions "to bring President [Vladimir] Putin to the table," if necessary, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. He stated that Trump had "instructed [him] to rethink the sanctions regime" and that the administration is "going for the maximum impact sanctions."
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