The U.S. highlighted at the U.N. this week what it called North Korea's continued violations of sanctions violations and its attempted evasion of those measures, including through cryptocurrency, cybercrime, its deployments of information technology workers around the world, and more. The findings were outlined in a report from the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a group formed to report on North Korea-related sanctions breaches (see 2410170003).
The U.S. this week sanctioned the Egyptian, Jordanian and Lebanese branches of the Muslim Brotherhood for their support of Hamas and terrorism, the Treasury and State departments announced. The State Department specifically labeled the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and it also applied the SDGT label to Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh, who Treasury said is the secretary general of the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood.
The Council of the European Union on Jan. 9 renewed its sanctions on Guatemala for an additional year, extending them to Jan. 13, 2027. The measures apply to eight people and one entity.
The U.S.'s recent repeal of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 “will be a significant step towards greater investment and economic activity” in the war-torn country, but challenges persist more than a year after the ouster of President Bashar Assad, a trade lawyer said in an interview Jan. 8.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that his agency plans to eventually lift sanctions against Venezuela and is receiving significant interest from independent oil companies that want to reenter the market.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week removed Kyriaki Demetriou Kamperi from its Specially Designated Nationals List after originally sanctioning him in 2023 for his Russia ties. The U.S. at the time said Kamperi was a "leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of" the Russian government and Russian bank Sberbank. The U.S. also said he had ties to companies owned by Christodoulos Georgiou Vassiliades, who was also designated for being a Sberbank executive. OFAC updated the SDN entry for the company Vassiliades & Co UK Limited to remove a reference to Kamperi.
The U.S. seized two vessels on the high seas Jan. 7 after saying they had violated U.S. sanctions.
Switzerland announced this week that it has frozen assets held within the country by Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan leader captured by the U.S. earlier this month, along with the assets of "other persons associated with him." The country's Federal Council said the move is aimed at preventing "an outflow of assets."
President Donald Trump said Venezuela will soon turn over to the U.S. 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil, which will be sold at market price. The money from those sales "will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!" he said Jan. 6 in a Truth Social post.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control renewed a general license this week that 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 13P, which replaces 13O, authorizes those transactions through 12:01 a.m. ET April 9, as long as they're “ordinarily incident and necessary to the day-to-day operations in the Russian Federation of such U.S. persons or entities.” The license was scheduled to expire Jan. 9.