The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will close its Response Team and Help Desk Dec. 26 due to the federal Christmas holiday, the agency said in a notice this week. Both will reopen 8 a.m. Dec. 27. “Due to the closure and depending on volume of inquires received, responses may be delayed through the following week,” DDTC said. “The processing of classified provisos for delivery may also be delayed.”
The Automated Export System soon will incorporate new response code 5C2 for when a commodity line in AES is reported with U.S. Munitions List Category XXI, but a commodity jurisdiction number is not reported, CBP said in a recent CSMS message. The new response message, which will be a fatal error, will be available in certification for testing Jan. 3 and “available in Production at a later date,” CBP said. “A follow-up message will announce when the messages will be active in Certification.”
Arif Ugur, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident, was sentenced to 33 months in prison and two years of supervised release for scheming to illegally export defense technical data to manufacturers in Turkey in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, DOJ announced Dec. 15. The technical data related to the "fraudulent manufacturing of parts and components used by the U.S. military" -- parts the Defense Department later found to be "substandard and unsuitable for use by the military."
The State Department is proposing to expand the definition of activities that are not exports, reexports, retransfers or temporary imports by adding two new entries, the agency said in a notice released Dec. 15. One new entry would be the “taking of defense articles outside a previously approved country by the armed forces of a foreign government” or U.N. personnel on a “deployment or training exercise,” the State Department said. The second entry would be a foreign defense item that enters the U.S. but is subsequently exported under a license, provided it has not been “modified, enhanced, upgraded, or otherwise altered or improved or had a U.S.-origin defense article integrated into it.”
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Mike Miller recently left his position as head of the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls to join the Defense Department as deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, a State Department spokesperson said Dec. 12. Miller previously served as deputy assistant secretary for defense trade in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw a flurry of recent changes and updates to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (see 2211100023, 2209280038, 2204290032 and 2105200061).
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls completed an interagency review for a final rule related to certain license exemptions for allies. The rule, received by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Dec. 2 and completed Dec. 8, would amend the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ Supplement No. 1 to Part 126 “in support of allies.” DDTC in July announced an open general license pilot to authorize reexports and retransfers of certain defense items and services to Australia, Canada and the U.K. (see 2207190008).
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls published in the Federal Register this week its temporary suspension of certain export license requirements for certain capacitors described in the U.S. Munitions List. The suspension, announced last month (see 2211230030), will last for six months and could allow DDTC to better “facilitate” commercial transactions involving the capacitors, including for the energy exploration and aviation sectors.
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The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls this week released its long-awaited updated compliance program guidelines (see 2211100023), which are intended to outline and detail “key elements” of an effective compliance program, the agency said. The 63-page document includes instructions on how to design a program for defense companies and universities that deal with items controlled on the U.S. Munitions List, as well as sections on recordkeeping, reporting, International Traffic in Arms Regulations training, risk assessment audits and more. DDTC stressed that “scope of ITAR activity in which different organizations engage varies substantially,” and each compliance program “should be tailored to address each organization’s ITAR-controlled activities, risk factors, and size.”