Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for April 8-12 in case they were missed.
Iran Export Controls
Certain items on the Commerce Control List require a license from BIS to export them to Iran. The Iranian Transactions Sanctions Regulations (ITSR) (31 CFR Part 560) also prohibit the export and reexport of goods to Iran subject to EAR.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced two settlements worth almost a combined $500,000 involving a United Kingdom-based oil and gas service provider, its subsidiaries and a New York-based global investment firm for violations of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Cuba and Iran.
Treasury’s March settlement with Stanley Black & Decker serves as a compliance guide for U.S. companies and represents an important peek into how the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control plans to issue enforcement settlements throughout 2019, according to an April 1 report by WilmerHale.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a $1.9 million settlement with a Connecticut-based industrial tool manufacturer and its China-based subsidiary after OFAC said the companies violated U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran, according to a March 27 notice. The U.S. company -- Stanley Black & Decker -- and the Chinese subsidiary -- Jiangsu Guoqiang Tools Co. (GQ) -- attempted to export 23 “shipments of power tools and spare parts” worth more than $3 million to Iran from mid-2013 to the end of 2014, OFAC said.
The U.S. plans to increase sanctions on Iran by targeting certain foreign entities doing business with the country, potentially creating more compliance issues for American companies, according to Steven Brotherton, principal at KPMG. Speaking at a KPMG export controls information event, Brotherton said he was told in a recent meeting with an official from the Department of State’s Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions sector that the U.S. administration will be doing “a number of things to really ratchet up the sanctions on Iran.”