On June 1, 2021, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) published the Burma Sanctions Regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 525 (the “BSR”) to implement Executive Order 14014, “Blocking Property With Respect to the Situation in Burma” (“EO 14014”). EO 14014 imposed sanctions on certain Burmese parties in response to the Burmese military’s coup against the democratically elected civilian government.
The BSR do not expand upon the sanctions previously imposed under EO 14014, but do introduce new general licenses authorizing:
- the provision of certain legal services to Specially Designated Nationals (“SDNs”) designated pursuant to EO 14014, and payment for such services from certain funds originating outside the United States;
- the provision and receipt of nonscheduled emergency medical services;
- deductions from blocked accounts of certain service charges owed to US financial institutions; and
- transfers of funds or credits between blocked accounts held by US financial institutions in their branches and offices, provided that no transfers are made from accounts held within the United States to accounts held outside the United States, and also provided that a transfer from a blocked account may be made only to another blocked account held in the same name.
OFAC also indicated that the BSR is being published in abbreviated form, and that it intends to provide more comprehensive regulations at a later date. Please see our prior blog posts on the sanctions imposed under EO 14014 here, and on two military-affiliated Burmese conglomerates here.
The authors acknowledge the assistance of Alexandra Pasch in the preparation of this blog post.
