The Bureau of Industry and Security is seeing fewer unintended impacts from its most recent October 2023 chip controls compared with the initial set of rules released in 2022, a BIS official said this week. The official also said BIS is working to identify certain companies, including potentially Chinese chip making facilities, that are restricted from receiving sensitive U.S. chip manufacturing equipment, which could help exporters more easily do due diligence on their customers and supply chain partners.
Behrouz Mokhtari of McLean, Virginia, and Tehran pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to two conspiracies to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran "by engaging in business activities on behalf of Iranian entities" without getting a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ announced Jan. 9. Mokhtari will forfeit money, property and assets obtained from the schemes, including a Campbell, California, home, and a money judgment of over $2.8 million, DOJ said. The defendant faces a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two conspiracy counts.
Electronics distribution company Broad Tech System and its president and owner, Tao Jiang of Riverside, California, pleaded guilty Jan. 11 to participating in a conspiracy to illegally ship chemicals made or distributed by a Rhode Island-based company to a Chinese firm with ties to the Chinese military, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island announced. Jiang and Broad Tech admitted to violating the Export Control Act and conspiring to commit money laundering.
A 2022 Bureau of Industry and Security policy change has continued to lead to improved Chinese cooperation with BIS end-use checks, an agency official said Jan. 23.
Although U.S. lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to develop a set of sanctions it could immediately impose against China if Beijing were to invade Taiwan, experts told a think tank this week that it remains unclear how exactly the U.S. would respond, including whether it would use military force.
The Bureau of Industry and Security last week removed three companies from the Unverified List after it was able to successfully complete end-use checks.
The Treasury Department declined a request by the two leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to impose Global Magnitsky sanctions against leading Chinese surveillance company Hikvision for human rights violations, Chair Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said this week.
The Bureau of Industry and Security believes its export controls are adequate to protect all 19 of the critical and emerging technology categories identified by the White House as important to national security (see 2202090016), a BIS official said on Jan. 17.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has asked the Smithsonian Institution to provide more information about its bird genetics research partnership with China-based Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), saying he’s concerned about BGI’s ties to its country’s military and what he calls its aggressive data collection activities.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week unveiled a new set of changes to its voluntary self-disclosure policies that it hopes will allow compliance professionals to spend more time and money preventing serious export violations and less resources on reporting minor ones. The agency also said it has seen a sharp uptick in self-disclosures of serious violations over the last year and has been getting more tips from businesses about possible violations committed by their competitors.