China and Russia proposed a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council to ease sanctions on North Korea, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said at a Dec. 17 press conference. China said it wants to denuclearize the Korean peninsula through continued negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea, which should result in the removal of sanctions. “Some sanctions should be lifted in light of [North Korea’s] compliance with relevant resolutions,” the spokesman said. “China hopes the Security Council members will … support the draft resolution proposed by China and Russia and jointly work for political settlement of the Peninsula issue.” Along with lifting sanctions, the proposal submitted by China and Russia calls for the removal of a ban on North Korean exports of statues, seafood and textiles, according to a Dec. 17 report from Reuters.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is expected to increase enforcement of its 50 percent rule, placing more of a burden on companies to determine whether they are indirectly dealing with a sanctioned party, said Joshua Shrager, a former Treasury official and a senior specialist with Kharon, a sanctions advisory firm. While the 50 percent rule -- which bans transactions with a company owned 50 percent or more by a sanctioned party -- is growing increasingly complicated due to a rise in U.S. sanctions, OFAC’s compliance expectations are rising too, Shrager said.
The European Union will renew sanctions against Russia for another six months, the European Council decided Dec. 13, according to a press release. The sanctions, targeting Russia’s financial, energy and defense sectors, were due to expire in January, according to the EU Sanctions blog.
The State Department sanctioned Saudi and Chechen government officials for human rights violations, the agency said Dec. 10. The targets include Mohammed al Otaibi, former consul general of Saudi Arabia in Turkey, and Aslan Iraskhanov, head of the Ministry of Interior Affairs for the city of Grozny in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation.
Ukraine will extend tariffs on Russian goods for one year until Dec. 20, 2020, according to a Dec. 5 post from the European Sanctions blog. Ukraine previously expanded sanctions against Russia to ban imports of certain types of cement, plywood and lumber and to increase import tariffs on coal, gas and pharmaceutical products, the blog said.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 17 people and seven entities, including Russia-based Evil Corp, for acting as “malicious cyber-enabled actors,” according to a Dec. 5 press release. Evil Corp is a “cybercriminal” organization responsible for the development of Dridex malware, which infects computers to harvest login credentials from “hundreds” of banks in more than 40 countries, leading to more than $100 million in theft, Treasury said. Evil Corp’s actions have caused “millions of dollars of damage” to U.S. and international financial institutions, including their customers, the press release said.
An Iranian businessman was sentenced to 46 months in prison for illegally exporting carbon fiber from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said Nov. 14. Behzad Pourghannad worked with two others between 2008 and 2013 to export the carbon fiber to Iran from third countries using falsified documents and front companies, the agency said.
A Lebanese energy equipment company was fined $368,000 by the Bureau of Industry and Security after it illegally reexported generators to Syria, according to a settlement agreement signed Nov. 27. Ghaddar Machinery allegedly committed 20 violations of the Export Administration Regulations from 2014 to 2016, totaling about $730,000 worth of exports, BIS said. Ghaddar agreed to pay the penalty in five installments through November 2021. Failure to make the payments could result in more penalties, according to the settlement agreement, including a two-year denial of export privileges.
Apple was fined about $465,000 for violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Sanctions Regulations after it hosted, sold and “facilitated the transfer” of software applications and content belonging to a sanctioned company, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a Nov. 25 notice. Apple allegedly dealt in “the property and interests” of SIS d.o.o., a Slovenian software company added to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List in 2015.
Two Russian nationals, two Italian nationals, a U.S. citizen and three companies were charged in a conspiracy to evade international trade sanctions, including violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Control Reform Act, the Justice Department said in a Dec. 3 press release. The conspiracy involved an attempted $17.3 million purchase of a Vectra 40G power turbine and attempts at wire fraud and money laundering, the Justice Department said.