A large U.S. sanctions penalty earlier this month is a sign of the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s rising compliance expectations for investment firms, accountants, wealth advisers and other financial “gatekeepers,” particularly if they’re aware that funds may be indirectly tied to a sanctioned person, law firms said. The fine, which was the largest OFAC penalty since 2023, also could begin a trend of tougher enforcement on those gatekeepers, law firms said, especially if they rely on wrong legal advice or don’t fully cooperate with OFAC.
Sanctioned Russian shadow fleet vessels can receive port access and services at an EU port if they’re carrying dangerous or polluting goods that need to be unloaded, the European Commission said in a new FAQ last week. Those vessels can offload “for a unique emergency port call” if they were sanctioned while they were carrying the cargo, the FAQ said, “and in any case not later than 30 days from the date of targeting.” It also said a “60-day winddown period is justified” in cases where other circumstances “do not allow for an earlier offloading of the dangerous or polluting goods and serious risks persist that could endanger human life, marine environments, and coastal infrastructure.”
Malaysia said it's looking into reports that a Chinese company is using servers with Nvidia chips and artificial intelligence chips for large language models training in Malaysia. The country's Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry is "still in the process of verifying the matter with relevant agencies if any domestic law or regulation has been breached."
Days after U.S. officials said they secured an agreement for Beijing to rein in its export curbs on critical minerals (see 2506110044), China announced it has approved license applications for those exports, but didn't offer more details.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a member of the committee, introduced a bill June 18 to repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation on June 18 removed one entry from its global anti-corruption sanctions list and added one entry to its ISIL (Da'esh) and al-Qaida sanctions list. Under the anti-corruption sanctions regime, OFSI removed Bosnian national Slobodan Tesic, who was originally listed for bribing both the former chief state prosecutor and minister of defense of Bosnia. Under the ISIL sanctions list, OFSI added Ugandan Abubakar Swalleh for acting as an ISIL facilitator since 2018 by providing financial support for ISIL in East and Southern Africa.
The U.S. last week sanctioned four people, 12 entities, and two vessels that have imported oil and other goods for the Houthis in what was the “single largest action” taken by the Office of Foreign Assets Control against the Yemen-based designated terror group. OFAC said the designations target Houthi front companies, their owners, and other “key” operatives that generate revenue for the group through sales of oil and other commodities on Yemen’s black market and through smuggling at Houthi-controlled ports.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control last week sanctioned a network of companies and a vessel for helping to ship sensitive machinery to Iran, including from China.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control last week removed sanctions from Sakan General Trading, also known as Royal Credit General Trading, a United Arab Emirates company sanctioned by the agency in 2019. The company was designated for providing currency exchange support and financing for the currency exchange arm of Ansar Bank, a bank controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. An OFAC spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment, and the agency didn't immediately release more information about the delisting.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on June 20 again extended a general license that continues to delay an exemption that would authorize certain transactions related to Petroleos de Venezuela, Venezuela’s state-owned energy company. General License 5S, which replaced GL 5R, now authorizes certain transactions with PdVSA involving an 8.5% bond on or after Dec. 20. The previous license was set to allow those transactions to occur on or after July 3.