On January 15, 2021, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) published an interim final rule (“Rule”) amending various provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) to implement certain provisions of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (“ECRA”). Among other things further outlined below, the Rule imposes new restrictions on specific activities of US persons. By way of brief background, the EAR generally controls transactions involving US origin items (i.e., goods, software, technology)…
On January 1, 2021, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (the “NDAA 2021”) was enacted into law after the US Congress voted to override the President’s veto of the bill. The defense budget legislation authorizes $740.5 billion for national defense spending and sets policies on military compensation, procurement of equipment, operations, and training. In addition, similar to most National Defense Authorization Acts in recent years, the NDAA 2021 includes provisions regarding sanctions…
On November 17, 2020, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (“OFAC”) amended General License (“GL”) 8F and re-issued it as General License 8G. GL 8G extends the validity period of certain limited maintenance and wind-down transactions and activities involving Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (“PdVSA”) until June 3, 2021. Our blog posts describing previous amendments to the general license are available here, here, here, and here. Specifically, GL 8G extends the validity period of the authorization…
On October 8, 2020, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) identified the Iranian financial sector as subject to Executive Order (“EO”) 13902 and, based on such identification, designated 18 Iranian banks. Our previous blog post on EO 13902 is available here. OFAC also issued a general license and Iran-related Frequently Asked Questions, as further described below. The action represents a significant escalation of the sanctions targeting Iran’s financial sector, yet many…