Molly Miller, a former chief of the Office of Foreign Assets Control's enforcement division, has joined Bank of America as its managing director for global economic sanctions, Miller announced on LinkedIn. She most recently worked for Capital One after leaving OFAC in 2015.
Authorities in the Dominican Republic seized an aircraft used by sanctioned Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) at the request of the U.S. government due to alleged sanctions and export control violations, DOJ announced.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control officially retired its RSS feed Jan. 31, the agency said in a notice this week (see 2411220009). The agency continues to provide updates about recent sanctions by email, and users can sign up for those updates. Technical support questions should be sent to O_F_A_C@treasury.gov.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned a network of people, companies and ships that it said are moving millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil to China on behalf of the Iranian military and a sanctioned front company, Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars (see 2311290034).
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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, reintroduced a bill Jan. 31 that would direct the State Department to designate four Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
A group of 13 House Democrats urged the Trump administration Jan. 31 not to ease sanctions on Venezuela as part of a deal to return Venezuelans living in the U.S. to their home country.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network this week rescinded two alerts that warned banks about transactions that may have been funding “Israeli extremist settler violence” in violation of U.S. sanctions (see 2402010053). The alerts had asked banks and other financial institutions to submit suspicious activity reports to FinCEN if they believed a transaction may have been tied to West Bank violence. The move came days after the Office of Foreign Assets Control, under the direction of President Donald Trump, officially removed sanctions from all people and entities designated under a Biden-era sanctions authority that had targeted violent Israeli settlers and organizations in the region (see 2501240011).
Patrick Dierfield, a former senior sanctions compliance manager with cryptocurrency exchange Okcoin, is joining the Office of Foreign Assets Control as a sanctions regulations adviser, he announced on LinkedIn. Dierfield joined OFAC this month.
The auction process for ships to pass through the Panama Canal when the water is low, and the fact that a Hong Kong company owns ports by the entrance and exit of the Panama Canal were the focuses of a Senate hearing on the canal -- but the way Iranian ships used Panama to evade sanctions also came up.