On November 27, 2018, the President signed Executive Order 13851 targeting Nicaragua entitled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Nicaragua” (“Nicaragua EO”) available here. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) also issued a press release related to the Nicaragua EO available here, and added two close associates of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (“SDN List”) pursuant to the new Nicaragua EO, the notice for which is available here. The two new SDNs are the current Vice President of Nicaragua and President Ortega’s wife, Rosario Maria Murillo de Ortega, and President Ortega’s national security adviser, Nestor Moncada Lau.
On September 12, 2018, President Trump issued a new Executive Order, “Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election” (the “Order”). The Order authorizes the designation as Specially Designated Nationals (“SDNs”) of parties that engage in foreign interference in US elections. While the Order provides the authorization and criteria for such designations, it does not designate any additional parties as SDNs at this time. The Order also requires additional review of the nature and extent of any foreign interference in each US federal election, including the upcoming midterm Congressional elections. Although it is not targeting any particular country or government, the Order comes as the US Congress debates additional sanctions on Russia’s largest banks and energy companies and the purchase of Russian sovereign debt in response to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.
On June 7, 2018, the US Department of Commerce announced that Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Corporation (“ZTE Corporation”) and ZTE Kangxun Telecommunications Ltd. (“ZTE Kangxun” and, collectively with ZTE Corporation, “ZTE”) had agreed to additional penalties and compliance measures to secure their removal from the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) Denied Persons List and regain access to US products and components. The new agreement imposes significant additional fines on ZTE, requires the company to carry out management changes, and institutes strict compliance requirements. Importantly, ZTE has not yet been removed from the Denied Persons List and remains subject to the existing restrictions until certain steps are taken. Nevertheless, the agreement sets out a path forward for ZTE to soon resume operations that had otherwise stalled due to the lack of access to US items.
On April 15, 2018, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued an order activating a suspended denial order (the “Order”) concerning ZTE Corporation and ZTE Kangxun Telecommunications Ltd. (collectively, “ZTE” or the “Company”). In explaining the activation, BIS described repeated misleading or false statements made to the US Government both before and since a March 2017 settlement agreement concerning violations of the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) (“Settlement Agreement’). More information on the ZTE investigation and the Settlement Agreement can be found in our previous posts here and here.