The State Department will “probably” meet a new deadline to finalize an International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) exemption for Australia and the U.K. under the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership, a department official said April 23.
DOJ charged 10 individuals with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela by shipping aircraft parts to service the company's fleet in Venezuela.
Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer highlighted U.S. and European cooperation on sanctions and export controls while speaking at the Transatlantic Business Summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope, and said their governments are working on more ways to punish Russia for its aggression against Ukraine.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on April 23 sanctioned two leaders of al-Qa’ida-aligned terrorist group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) for the hostage-taking of U.S. persons in West Africa. The designations target Sidan ag Hitta of Mali and Jafar Dicko of Burkina Faso. Concurrently, the State Department sanctioned five JNIM leaders, as well as two al-Murabitoun leaders, for hostage taking of U.S. nationals.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on April 23 sanctioned two companies and four people for their roles in malicious cyber activity against more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC).
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The State Department is proposing to increase fees for registration with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, it said in a notice released April 23. The agency also is proposing changes to the DDTC fee structure, as well as a reorganization of its International Traffic in Arms Regulations on fees and registration.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on April 19 partially dismissed a lawsuit from sanctioned individuals Mir Rahman Rahmani and Hafi Ajmal Rahmani and over two dozen of their companies challenging their sanctions listing for their alleged role in a corruption scheme that swiped millions of dollars from U.S. contracts in Afghanistan (Mir Rahman Rahmani v. Janet Yellen, D.D.C. # 24-00285).
The European Commission added to its sanctions FAQs for the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts on April 18.
The EU General Court last week rejected a challenge from Belgium and Czech Republic-based company Cogebi to EU import restrictions on Russian-made mica products. The court said that the European Council had laid out sufficient reasons for barring the import of mica products in that the council appropriately found the sale of mica products to "generate significant revenues for the Russian Federation."