A group of 13 House Democrats urged the Trump administration Jan. 31 not to ease sanctions on Venezuela as part of a deal to return Venezuelans living in the U.S. to their home country.
Congress could encourage greater use of sanctions by changing the reporting requirements it imposes on the executive branch, a think-tank leader told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jan. 30.
The U.K. removed Nikolay Ivanovich Bortsov, a former member of the Russian assembly, from its Russian sanctions list on Jan. 30. Bortsov died in April 2023.
The Council of the EU on Jan. 30 renewed its list of individuals and entities subject to sanctions for engaging in terrorism, though it delisted one deceased person. The sanctions currently apply to 14 individuals and 22 groups and now run until Feb. 22, 2027.
The European Commission last week published a first-of-its-kind report on dual-use export control licensing patterns that it says will give companies, governments and the public a “better understanding of how export controls are applied” within the bloc.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce are unlikely to target the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is already dealing with employee shortages as it carries out U.S. export control policy, a former senior BIS official said.
Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, reintroduced a bill Jan. 29 that would require the president to identify and sanction those responsible for torture, abductions and other human rights abuses against Southern Mongolians in China. Merkley said the bill is intended to counter China’s efforts to erase Mongolian culture and language. The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Policy Act was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Merkley previously introduced the bill in November.
A bipartisan group of four House members introduced a resolution Jan. 28 calling for additional sanctions against Belarusian officials following that country’s recent “fraudulent” presidential election that extended the longtime rule of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The Census Bureau is making permanent a “fillable” voluntary self-disclosure form that it launched as a pilot program in August, saying the form has allowed the agency to receive more “timely and complete” data and more efficiently process disclosures. The Census Trade Regulations Branch will officially begin implementing the disclosure form March 3, the agency said in a Jan. 30 email to industry.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network this week rescinded two alerts that warned banks about transactions that may have been funding “Israeli extremist settler violence” in violation of U.S. sanctions (see 2402010053). The alerts had asked banks and other financial institutions to submit suspicious activity reports to FinCEN if they believed a transaction may have been tied to West Bank violence. The move came days after the Office of Foreign Assets Control, under the direction of President Donald Trump, officially removed sanctions from all people and entities designated under a Biden-era sanctions authority that had targeted violent Israeli settlers and organizations in the region (see 2501240011).