The District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Oct. 1 unsealed an indictment against Russian citizen Aleksandr Ryzhenkov, the "second-in-command" of the Russian cybercriminal group Evil Corp., for using the BitPaymer ransomware variant against various U.S. individuals to "hold their sensitive data for ransom," DOJ announced.
A Russian citizen living in North Georgia, Feliks Medvedev, was sentenced on Oct. 2 to three years and 10 months in prison for conducting an "unlicensed money transmitting business," which saw the transfer of over $150 million in Russian money. Medvedev was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison sentence and told to pay a $10,000 fine, DOJ said.
The U.K. Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on Oct. 3 added CJSC Alfa Bank Belarus to its Belarus sanctions regime. OFSI said the bank carries out business in the country's financial services sector, which is a "sector of strategic significance to the Government of Belarus."
Australia extradited Chinese national Jin Guanghua to the U.S. last week to face charges that he, along with co-conspirators, took part in a scheme to sell tobacco in North Korea in violation of U.S. sanctions, DOJ announced. Jin made his initial appearance in a District of Columbia district court Sept. 30.
The U.K. on Oct. 1 updated a sanctions license that authorizes sanctioned parties to make utility payments for water or sewerage services to U.K. properties. The U.K. updated the license's definition of "designated parties" and extended the "validity" of the license to make it "indefinite."
Covington announced last week that it opened a trade controls enforcement practice group to represent clients in sanctions and export controls investigations. The practice group combines the firm's trade controls regulatory practice and its white collar defense and investigations practice and will house teams in China, the EU, the U.K. and the U.S. Eric Sandberg-Zakian, a sanctions and export controls partner based in Washington, D.C., will head the practice group, Covington said.
The U.K. will remove the licensing consideration relating to the provision of professional and business services from U.K. parent companies and their U.K. subsidiaries to their Russian subsidiaries, the Export Control Joint Unit announced on Sept. 30. Starting Oct. 31, the provision of intra-corporate services will no longer stand as a licensing consideration "that is likely to be consistent with the aims of the sanctions regime." The agency said companies looking to provide intra-corporate services to their Russian subsidiaries must "explicitly demonstrate how the provision of any ongoing services aligns with the overarching purposes of the sanctions."
Ljiljana Karadzic asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to set aside its order dismissing her suit challenging her designation on the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals List (see 2408070040). Karadzic claimed the D.C. court failed to address her claim that OFAC made an "unreasonable" decision in "declining to remove her from the list" (Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic v. Lisa Palluconi, D.D.C. # 23-01226).
Luxembourg's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) announced this week that it imposed an over $44,600 fine on Dock Financial, an "electronic money institution," for skirting money laundering and terrorist financing obligations. CSSF identified the company's violations during an on-site inspection from 2021 to 2022, finding that a "substantial part" of Dock's client portfolio wasn't subject to the required name screening controls "on a daily basis, over a substantial period of time." The commission also said, although Dock identified suspicions of money laundering "in 11 client files," the company reported them "with substantial delays." CSSF faulted the company's "internal governance framework," finding it deficient due to "insufficient controls performed by the second and the third lines of defence."
The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Russian national Sergey Ivanov and virtual currency exchange Cryptex, which is operated by Ivanov. The move was announced concurrently with enforcement action from various U.S. and international enforcement agencies, including an indictment unsealed against Ivanov and fellow Russian national Timur Shakhmametov.