The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week issued a final rule to implement a 2022 executive order that created new sanctions against terrorist organizations, criminal groups and others who take hostages (see 2207190045). The rule describes various prohibitions, gives licensing information, provides definitions, outlines penalties and recordkeeping requirements, and more. The Hostages and Wrongful Detention Sanctions Regulations are effective July 11.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week again renewed a Venezuela-related license that authorizes certain transactions related to exports or reexports of liquefied petroleum gas to Venezuela (see 2107120054 and 2207070032). General License No. 40B, which replaces General License No 40A, is valid through 12:01 a.m. EDT July 10, 2024. The license was scheduled to expire July 12.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control will retire its “PIP, DEL, and SDALL.ZIP sanctions list file formats” in August but continue to offer for public download the “XML, CSV, and FF file formats, the ZIP files SDN_XML and SDN_Advanced, and PDF versions” for the agency’s sanctions lists, it said in a notice last week. The notice includes a complete list of files that the agency will retire. OFAC said its Sanctions List Search tool “will not be affected by these changes, and users of the search tool will not experience any loss of service.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week issued a reminder to industry to file annual reports on blocked property by Sept. 30. The notice applies to blocked property held as of June 30.

Significant changes to Canadian sanctions laws took effect last month, including a new deemed ownership provision that could force companies to update their sanctions due diligence procedures, Bennett Jones said in a June client alert. Companies should “evaluate their current procedures in light of these new amendments, and think about how due diligence on prospective new transactions or business relationships may need to be updated,” Bennett Jones said of the changes, which took effect June 22.

The State Department recently maintained the foreign terrorism designations of ISIL-Libya and the Real IRA and added new aliases for each, the agency announced this week. The State Department said ISIL-Libya also uses the alias Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham in Libya as its primary name, and the Real IRA uses the alias New Irish Republican Army as its primary name.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week deleted 15 entries and updated three others on its Specially Designated Nationals List. The deleted entries were sanctioned for counter-narcotics reasons and for ties to Venezuela. The agency didn’t release more information.

The U.K.’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on June 26 added new “licensing grounds” to its Belarus sanctions guidance. The guidance includes a table listing all activities that may be authorized by a license, ranging from import and export transactions; technical assistance services; brokering services to financial services; and more.

The U.S. and U.K. published a joint guidance this week to “provide additional clarity” on what types of humanitarian aid and transactions related to “food security” are authorized under their respective Russian sanctions programs. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.K. Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said humanitarian groups, nongovernmental organizations, financial institutions and others involved in the agricultural or medical supply trade should use the seven-page document as a “guide when engaging in transactions that may be impacted by sanctions.”

The State Department recently added two people as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The designations apply to Arkan Ahmad 'Abbas al-Matuti and Nawaf Ahmad Alwan al-Rashidi, leaders of the Islamic State group.