The Office of Foreign Assets Control on Aug. 12 again extended a general license that continues to delay an exemption that would authorize certain transactions related to Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. General License 5P, which replaced GL 5O, now authorizes certain transactions with PdVSA involving an 8.5% bond on or after Nov. 12. The previous license was set to allow those transactions to occur on or after Aug. 13.
The U.S., the U.K. and Canada last week issued new, coordinated sanctions against Belarus, targeting people, companies and entities that are helping Russia evade sanctions and export controls, funding Belarusian oligarchs tied to President Alexander Lukashenko or taking other steps to aid the Russian or Belarusian governments. The sanctions, which were announced days after a similar set of designations imposed by the EU (see 2408050008), were meant to mark the four-year anniversary of the “fraudulent” 2020 presidential election that helped Lukashenko keep power, the countries said in a joint statement.
Ljiljana Karadzic, wife of former Serbian President Radovan Karadzic, said the U.S. government's recent sponsorship of a U.N. Security Council Resolution related to petitions for sanctions delisting helps her case that the Office of Foreign Assets Control unreasonably delayed in ruling on her delisting petition (Ljiljana Karadzic v. Bradley Smith, D.D.C. # 23-01226).
A bipartisan group of 46 House members urged the Biden administration this week to fully use “all tools at its disposal,” including sanctions, to crack down on Hezbollah’s international financing network.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Paraguayan tobacco company Tabacalera del Este S.A. for financially supporting former Paraguayan President Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara, sanctioned by OFAC last year for corruption (see 2301260073). The agency previously added Tabacalera del Este to its Specially Designated Nationals List for being owned by Cartes (see 2303310033), but Cartes has since sold the company, OFAC said, so the agency is now designating it under a 2017 executive order that authorizes Global Magnitsky sanctions for serious human rights abuses and corruption.
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Blake Hulnick, former attorney-adviser in the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s chief counsel office, was named senior adviser to the Treasury Department’s general counsel, he announced on LinkedIn. Hulnick joined Treasury in 2023.
Brian Nelson, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, is leaving the agency to join the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harrris, Axios reported last week. A Treasury spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment, but confirmed on LinkedIn that Nelson is being replaced by Brad Smith, the current director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, on an acting basis.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control renewed two Russia-related general licenses last week that authorize transactions related to debt, equity or currency-conversion. Both licenses were scheduled to expire Aug. 13 but now expire 12:01 a.m. EDT Oct. 12.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is transitioning to a new online compliance hotline platform that it said will allow the agency to more efficiently respond to sanctions-related requests and questions from the public. Users can now submit queries directly through the OFAC Compliance Hotline page, the agency announced Aug. 2, which will help the “tracking of queries and help OFAC assess when additional public guidance may be helpful.” The agency said it plans to retire its current compliance hotline email adress on Aug. 16 and phone number on Dec. 31, and will fully transition to the online portal starting Jan. 1.