The United Kingdom confirmed chief trade negotiators to lead negotiating teams in 2022 for nine countries or cooperative regions without current agreements, the Department for International Trade said in a Feb. 14 notice. Of the seven negotiators, two will be in charge of more than one territory or country; all will lead talks to establish new trade agreements, the DIT said. They are: Matt Davies for New Zealand, Graham Zebedee for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Charlotte Heyes for Mexico and Canada, Harjinder Kang for India, Graham Floater for Singapore and the U.S., Tom Wintle for the Gulf Cooperation Council and James Clarke for Israel. Vivien Life will continue as chief negotiator to see through the implementation of the new free trade agreement already signed with Australia.

Turkey will slash the value-added tax on staple food from 8% to 1% in a bid to curb inflation, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a virtual news conference, Bloomberg reported. Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said that the Turkish government will create a task force to look at prices and a mobile app to help citizens find the cheapest goods in other efforts to fight high prices. Nebati also said the government will implement a new Credit Guarantee Fund package that will guarantee up to 60 billion liras, or $4.45 billion, allowing banks to dole out much more, Bloomberg said. So far, the Turkish central bank has cut interest rates by 500 basis points in four meetings since September, Bloomberg said. Turkey also recently authorized its agriculture ministry to restrict ag exports in an effort to control domestic food price inflation (see 2202020032).

The United Kingdom updated 18 entries under its Iran (Nuclear) sanctions regime, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said. It amended the entries for Kamran Daneshjoo, Mohammad Shafi'i Rudsari, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, and Sepanir Oil and Gas Energy Engineering. OFSI removed duplicate aliases from the non-HTML/PDF formats of the consolidated sanctions list for the entries of Hojatoleslam Ali Saidi, Mohammad Naderi, Ghani Sazi Uranium, Iran Communications Industries, Isfahan Optics, Shakhese Behbud Sanat and Technology Cooperation Office of the Iranian President's Office. It also removed duplicate dates of birth that were showing on the non-HTML/PDF formats of the consolidated sanctions list for the entries of Ali Akbar Ahmadian, Yahya Rahim Safavi, Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Morteza Rezaie.

The United Kingdom updated two listings under its South Sudan sanctions regime and three entries under its Democratic Republic of the Congo sanctions list, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said in notices. Under the South Sudan list, entries for Peter Gadet, deputy chief of staff-operations for the Sudan People's Liberation Army in Opposition, and Michael Makuei Lueth, minister for information and broadcasting, were amended. Under the Congo sanctions list, the entries for these were amended: Deputy Prime Minister Evariste Boshab; former Kasai Central Gov. Alex Kande Mupompa; and John Numbi, inspector general of the Congolese Armed Forces.

An amendment to the United Kingdom's Russia sanctions regime expanding the criteria under which individuals and entities can be listed entered into force Feb. 10. The revised regulation allows the U.K. to sanction people who have been involved in destabilizing Ukraine or obtaining a benefit from backing the Russian government, among other things. Parliament defined a person being "involved in obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia" as someone running a government-affiliated business, engaging in business of economic significance to the Russian government, carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance to the government or owning or controlling a government-affiliated entity.

A new London School of Economics and Political Science report commissioned by the European Commission reviews the implementation and enforcement of environmental and labor provisions in free trade agreements in an effort to bolster the commission's Trade and Sustainable Development approach. The report, "Comparative Analysis of Trade and Sustainable Development Provisions in Free Trade Agreements," studied FTAs involving the EU, Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the U.S., showing a large variation of enforcement and implementation of TSD measures. The commission said the report found that cooperation is key for TSD implementation, even for countries that use trade sanctions for TSD enforcement.

The U.K.'s House of Commons held a debate session titled "Kazakhstan: Anti-corruption Sanctions" Feb. 3 to discuss imposing restrictive measures on bad actors in the Central Asian nation. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the All-Party Parliament Group -- an informal collection of cross-party groups with no official status in Parliament -- said the U.K. should use its global anti-corruption sanctions regime to designate the "kleptocrats" in Kazakhstan. Hodge called for sanctions on 24 individuals, all of whom she said have benefited from the alleged kleptocracy at the heart of the Kazakh government. Many of those individuals are related to the Kazakh president.

The U.K. amended two entries under its Global Anti-Corruption sanctions regime, in a Feb. 8 financial sanctions notice. The amended entries are for Ashraf Said Ahmed Hussein Ali, who has been involved in corruption in South Sudan, and Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who has taken part in the misappropriation of public funds in Equatorial Guinea, the notice said. An asset freeze remains in effect for each.

The EU released information Feb. 8 about the status of its member states' implementation of a regime for the brokering, technical assistance, transit, transfer and control of exports of dual-use items. An EU regulation mandated, among other things, that the member states employ a dual-use export control program, but the European Commission found that only eight nations have either partially or fully implemented the program. Those countries are Belgium, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland. The bloc's largest economies, on the other hand, including France, Germany, Spain and Italy, have not implemented the export controls program.

The French Court of Cassation requested the European Court of Justice to interpret an element of the EU's sanctions on Iraq. The request comes in a case brought by Dutch air pollution control equipment company Instrubel NV in which a French court found that "preventative attachments" against Montana Management -- a trust fund formerly owned by Saddam Hussein -- were void because Montana hadn't been served. Montana was placed under the EU's Iraq sanctions regime in 2006, an EU Sanctions blog post said. Instead of serving Montana, the Iraqi government was served in the case. The Iraqi government in 2011 took control over the mandate of the Development Fund of Iraq, which the U.N. set up in 2003 to distribute assets seized from the Iraqi regime.