The Council of the European Union on April 14 sanctioned seven individuals and two entities under its Iran sanctions regime for their role in arbitrarily detaining EU "mono and dual nationals on spurious grounds" and executing members of ethnic and religious minorities, the council said. The entities are the Shiraz Central Prison and the First Branch of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz. The individuals are members of the judiciary, including two involved with the prison system.

The U.K. this week amended four entries under its domestic counterterrorism sanctions list to make them subject to "director disqualification" sanctions. These sanctions block them from directly or indirectly being a director of a U.K. company. The people are Mohammed Fawaz Khaled, Aozma Sultana, Nazem Ahmad and Mustafa Ayash.

The U.K. added four Georgian officials to its global human rights sanctions regime April 10. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation sanctioned Shalva Bedoidze, Georgia's first deputy minister of internal affairs; Giorgi Gabitashvili, general prosecutor; Karlo Katsitadze, head of the special investigatory service; and Mirza Kezevadze, deputy chief of the special task department.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned United Arab Emirates-based Indian national Jugwinder Singh Brar for owning multiple shipping companies that operate a fleet of vessels helping Iran move sanctioned goods. OFAC designated his UAE-based companies Prime Tankers LLC and Glory International FZ-LLC, along with India-based companies Global Tankers Private Limited and B and P Solutions Private Limited, and more than 30 vessels with ties to the companies or Brar.

The U.S. this week sanctioned Mexican national Jesus Alfredo Beltran Guzman for trafficking illegal drugs into the U.S. and for being a key leader of the drug trafficking group Beltran Leyva Organization. The Office of Foreign Assets Control said the group is "one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world, and it has moved fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the U.S.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned five Iranian companies and one person for supporting entities that work on Iran's nuclear program, including the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Iran Centrifuge Technology Co. OFAC said the designations target companies procuring or making critical technologies for the two Iranian organizations.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published Arabic translations of several general licenses that authorize certain transactions with the Yemen-based Houthis, also known as Ansarallah. The licenses cover transactions related to certain agricultural goods, telecommunications, personal remittances, petroleum products, port operations and diplomatic missions.

A new license issued this week by the Office of Foreign Assets Control authorizes payments of certain taxes, fees, import duties, licenses, certifications and other similar transactions involving the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund of the Russian Federation, and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation that would normally be blocked under Directive 4 of Executive Order 14024. General License 13M authorizes those transactions through 12:01 a.m. EDT July 9 as long as they are “ordinarily incident and necessary to the day-to-day operations in the Russian Federation of such U.S. persons or entities.”

The European Commission this week updated its Syria-related sanctions guidance to clarify what types of activities with the country are permitted after the EU in February suspended certain restrictions against Syria (see 2502240010). The guidance also addresses how EU companies should approach the “interplay between EU sanctions and US sanctions” against Syria, saying that EU parties “are not required to comply with US sanctions. They are only required to comply with EU sanctions.” It added that U.S. sanctions “might be intended to produce effects beyond the US territory and seek to regulate the behaviour of EU economic operators that have no significant connection to the US,” but the EU doesn’t recognize the “extra-territorial application of laws adopted by third countries and considers such application to be contrary to international law.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control on April 2 released quarterly reports on certain licensing activities for Iran, covering the period from October 2024 through December 2024. The reports provide licensing statistics for exports of agricultural goods, medicine and medical devices as required by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000.