The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned six entities and six people based in Iran and China for their ties to a network that buys ballistic missile propellant ingredients for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. OFAC said the network has specifically provided Iran with sodium perchlorate, which is used to produce ammonium perchlorate, a substance subject to export controls by the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime. The network has also supplied Iran with dioctyl sebacate, a chemical used in ballistic missiles.
Copa Holdings, the parent company of Latin American airlines Copa Airlines and Wingo, recently disclosed to the U.S. government that it may have violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba.
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The Trump administration’s plans to reduce export control cooperation with allies, particularly the EU, could lead to more differences between the two jurisdictions' export systems, especially for controls targeted toward China, lawyers said this week.
James Rockas is no longer with the Bureau of Industry and Security after being appointed by the Trump administration to the position of deputy undersecretary in January, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Rockas left BIS last week and moved to the State Department, a Commerce Department spokesperson confirmed. He was replaced by Joe Bartlett, the BIS legislative affairs director.
The State Department last week released its annual report to Congress of authorized exports of defense goods and services to foreign countries and international organizations during FY 2024. The report covers direct commercial sales of licensed items for permanent export under the Arms Export Control Act and includes export statistics for each country and organization, including aggregate dollar values of the exports, their quantities and data on the actual shipments of those licensed exports.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls this week released its notifications to Congress of recently proposed export licenses. The notifications, which cover licenses submitted from April through June and July through September of 2024, include exports to Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Israel, Canada, Ukraine, Norway, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.
Several speakers at a Capitol Hill event hosted by the Burma Research Institute April 28 called for sanctioning Myanmar’s military junta for human rights violations against civilians.
The U.K. issued a new version of a Russia-related legal services general license to reset the cap on fees that can be paid to British law firms by parties subject to Russia-related sanctions. The legal fees cap is set at about $2.68 million (or 2 million pounds) per law firm and the expenses cap at 10% of the legal fees, up to about $268,000 (or 200,000 pounds), for the duration of the license. The license takes effect April 29 and expires Oct. 28. The previous license expired April 28 (see 2410290017).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned three vessels and their owners for supporting the Yemen-based Houthis and the group's attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, including by supplying them with oil shipments.