A new White House memo on President Donald Trump’s “America-first investment policy” previews efforts to expand both inbound and outbound foreign investment restrictions, tamp down on the use of mitigation agreements, fast-track investment deals from certain allies and more.
Gal Haimovich, an Israeli national and owner of a freight forwarding company, was sentenced last week to two years in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty in September as part of a scheme to illegally ship aircraft parts and avionics from U.S. manufacturers and suppliers to Russia (see 2409110018). DOJ said Haimovich -- who admitted to deceiving U.S. companies about the destination of the goods, some of which were sent to a sanctioned Russian airline Siberian Airlines (see 2412090012 -- also forfeited $2,024,435.44 to the U.S. government.
The U.S. and 10 of its close allies held the first meeting last week of the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) Steering Committee, the group formed last year to report on North Korea-related sanctions violations and evasion. The committee, which also includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea and the U.K., was established after Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council proposal that would have extended the “panel of experts” that had been monitoring U.N. sanctions against North Korea (see 2410170003).
Many opportunities exist to increase the effectiveness of U.S. financial sanctions, researchers said during a Feb. 20 hearing of the congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Any potential U.S.-Russia agreement to end the war in Ukraine will likely take at least a year to come to fruition, researchers and policy experts said, although some U.S. sanctions could be lifted in the meantime.
EU officials have agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia, European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said Feb. 19. The measures will include more import and export restrictions, “tighter anti-circumvention measures,” and a “stronger crackdown” on Russia’s shadow fleet -- the ships Moscow uses to transport sanctioned goods. “The EU must remain united against the aggressor,” Dombrovskis said on social media platform X.
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DOJ charged an Ohio-based subsidiary of a Russian aircraft parts supplier and three of its current and former employees with illegally exporting aircraft parts from the U.S. to Russia and Russian airline companies, DOJ announced.
The U.K. added three people and two entities to its Russia sanctions list on Feb. 14. The individuals are Artem Yuryevich Chaika, who was listed for owning or controlling extractive company First Non-Metallic Company; Pavel Mikhailovich Fradkov, deputy minister of the Ministry of Defense; and Vladimir Viktorovich Selin, head of the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control. The entities are Joint Stock Company Kirov Energomash Plant and LLC Rosatom Additive Technologies.
Former President Joe Biden's administration made the most “aggressive and far-reaching use” of trade tools of any U.S. administration in history, and the new Trump administration is on track to “wield these tools in an even more aggressive manner,” Gibson Dunn said in a 2024 international trade recap released this month. Although the Treasury Department under Biden imposed sanctions at a faster rate than any of his predecessors, the law firm noted that President Donald Trump favors tariffs, which could cause the targets of those tariffs, including U.S. trading partners in Europe and Asia, to deploy similar tools “either in retaliation against U.S. measures or in pursuit of their own strategic interests.”