The U.S., the U.K. and Australia on Jan. 23 sanctioned Russian national Aleksandr Ermakov, who played a “pivotal” role in a 2022 ransomware attack against an Australian healthcare insurance company. The Office of Foreign Assets Control said Ermakov is a “cybercriminal” who also poses a risk to U.S. healthcare firms.
The U.S. likely will face challenges trying to place export controls on RISC-V, an open-source semiconductor architecture that policymakers fear China may use to evade export restrictions and leapfrog their U.S. competitors, Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said this week.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Behrouz Mokhtari of McLean, Virginia, and Tehran pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to two conspiracies to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran "by engaging in business activities on behalf of Iranian entities" without getting a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ announced Jan. 9. Mokhtari will forfeit money, property and assets obtained from the schemes, including a Campbell, California, home, and a money judgment of over $2.8 million, DOJ said. The defendant faces a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two conspiracy counts.
Electronics distribution company Broad Tech System and its president and owner, Tao Jiang of Riverside, California, pleaded guilty Jan. 11 to participating in a conspiracy to illegally ship chemicals made or distributed by a Rhode Island-based company to a Chinese firm with ties to the Chinese military, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island announced. Jiang and Broad Tech admitted to violating the Export Control Act and conspiring to commit money laundering.
A 2022 Bureau of Industry and Security policy change has continued to lead to improved Chinese cooperation with BIS end-use checks, an agency official said Jan. 23.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week expanded its export controls against Russia and Belarus to cover a broader range of items and Harmonized System codes, including more industrial materials and aircraft parts. The agency also added new controls to better restrict exports used in Iran’s drone production, revised the de minimis treatment for certain military and spacecraft-related items, added a new license requirement exclusion and more.
Export Compliance Daily is providing this recap of export control and sanctions enforcement over the past year to assist export compliance professionals, lawyers and others in keeping pace with current enforcement trends. This guide summarizes the most notable enforcement actions by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Department of Justice since Jan. 1, 2023.
The Netherlands' Rotterdam District Court on Jan. 15 sustained the Dutch National Bank's sanctions on an unnamed financial services provider, according to an unofficial translation. The court held that the bank "rightly" found that from July 2015 to March 2018, the financial services provider "systematically failed to comply with several core obligations" by "hardly conducting any customer due diligence" and failing to carry out any sanctions screening.
Members of the European Parliament last week called on the bloc to sanction officials in China and Sudan for human rights violations.