The European Council on Jan. 22 added six entities to its Sudan sanctions list and six people and five entities to its Syria sanctions list.
The European Council on Jan. 22 created a new sanctions framework targeting Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. The bloc also sanctioned six people under the new regime, including various Hamas financiers and a senior Hamas “operative.”
The Aerospace Industries Association has released a five-page summary of major provisions in the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that deal with the Australia, U.K. and U.S. (AUKUS) security partnership and the Foreign Military Sales program.
The U.S. and the U.K. this week announced new sanctions against Hamas officials, people and entities helping to finance the terror group’s operations in Gaza, the Treasury Department said.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned an Iraqi airline, its CEO and others with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The agency said they have helped to deliver shipments to the IRGC-QF or have helped launder money and support Kata’ib Hizballah, an IRGC-QF militia in Iraq.
Although U.S. lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to develop a set of sanctions it could immediately impose against China if Beijing were to invade Taiwan, experts told a think tank this week that it remains unclear how exactly the U.S. would respond, including whether it would use military force.
The U.S. government’s enforcement actions last year show that it’s “very apparent” that export controls are a “major priority” for the Biden administration, and that will continue this year, risk intelligence firm Sayari said this month.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control last week released another video in its ongoing effort to provide guidance on U.S. sanctions programs and rules. The latest episode, released Jan. 19, features a tutorial on how to use OFAC’s Sanctions List Search Tool. The agency has released other videos as part of an “Introduction to OFAC” series, which is meant to provide an overview of the agency’s sanctions requirements (see 2307280070 and 2308280047).
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee urged the Biden administration on Jan. 18 to end Cuba’s “baseless, extremely harmful” designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The U.S., the EU and other countries imposing export controls against Russia need to better harmonize their restrictions, including by developing a “centralized” list of controlled dual-use goods, treating license applications the same way across all jurisdictions and creating coalition-wide foreign direct product rule restrictions, researchers said this month. They also said enforcement authorities need to impose harsher fines against corporations involved in illegally sending goods to Russia to incentivize them to invest more heavily in compliance.