The Council of the European Union on March 14 extended the sanctions on those undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine for another six months, pushing the restrictions out to Sept. 15. The council also decided not to renew the listings of four people and removed three deceased individuals from the list. The sanctions apply to nearly 2,400 people and entities.
The Group of 7 nations last week discussed imposing more sanctions against Russia if it doesn't agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine, including potentially a more strict cap on oil prices, they said in a joint statement after meeting in Quebec. They said any ceasefire “must be respected” and include “robust and credible security arrangements to ensure that Ukraine can deter and defend against any renewed acts of aggression.” The countries -- the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K., plus a representative from the EU -- also “condemned” military aid, along with the provision of weapons and dual-use components to Russia, by China, Iran and North Korea. The statement said China is “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war and of the reconstitution of Russia’s armed forces. We reiterated our intention to continue to take action against such third countries.”
OpenAI, Google and other leading technology companies and organizations urged the U.S. this month to rework the Biden administration’s artificial intelligence diffusion rule, saying it places too many restrictions on American firms and its trading partners.
Akin Gump announced the official launch of its national security and global investigations team on March 13. The practice group will work on "cross-border criminal, civil administrative and congressional investigations and voluntary self-disclosures relating to potential sanctions, export control, anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws and regulations," the firm said.
When the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network revises a rule implementing the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), it will aim to ensure the regulations are “appropriately tailored to advance the public interest,” a Treasury Department official told lawmakers last week.
A bipartisan group of nine lawmakers urged the State Department on March 12 to increase sanctions, including financial restrictions, on Bosnian Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik and his “enablers” for continuing to promote secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
CBP has updated a license code in the Automated Export System for shipments involving export licenses by partner government agencies that aren’t incorporated in AES, it said in a March 13 CSMS message. Exporters should use License Code OPA (Other Partnership Agency) to give CBP a “heads-up that some paper documentation is required by another Federal agency not accommodated in AES,” according to the agency, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Licenses from the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the State Department, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “cannot be used with license type” OPA, CBP said in the CSMS message.
A State Department notice declaring that all agency efforts to control international trade now constitute a "foreign affairs function" of the U.S. under the Administrative Procedure Act will ultimately be subject to the discretion of the courts, trade lawyers told us.
Former U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan defended the Biden administration's final weeks of moves that imposed sanctions against Russia and export controls on China, saying they set up the current administration for success.
Denmark is considering new legislation that could punish EU sanctions violators by sentencing them to up to eight years in prison, an uptick from the current maximum four-month sentence, the country’s Ministry of Justice said this week. And if there are "aggravating circumstances," the ministry said, certain offenders could face up to eight years, according to an unofficial translation.