Effective May 20, 2019, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued a final rule creating a 90-day Temporary General License (“TGL”) authorizing certain transactions involving the export, reexport, and transfer of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) to Chinese-headquartered Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (“Huawei”) and its sixty-eight non-US affiliates, which were added to the BIS Entity List effective May 16, 2019 (the “Entity List designation”). The TGL will be effective through August 19, 2019. Please see our prior blog post here for more information on the Entity List designation.
On January 31, 2019, OFAC issued eleven new FAQs and amended two existing FAQs in connection with the designation of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (“PdVSA”) as a Specially Designated National (“SDN”) pursuant to Executive Order 13850 on January 28, 2019. In addition, on February 1, 2019, OFAC amended two PdVSA-related general licenses (“GL”) and issued two additional FAQs describing the scope of those amendments, which modify the terms under which certain transactions involving PdVSA bonds and securities are authorized. Our prior blog post on the SDN designation of PdVSA and the previously issued Venezuela GLs is available here.
US trade sanctions and export controls targeting Iran have attracted increasing attention from Chinese companies doing business in Iran or with Iran counterparties. This client alert aims to provide a high-level overview on US trade sanctions and export controls targeting Iran, their implications (particularly in terms of their extraterritorial application), and the potential penalties that can be imposed on companies and their executives and employees in the event of violations.
On August 24, 2018, the US State Department gave notice of new sanctions on Russia under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (the “CBW Act”) after determining that the Russian Government has used chemical weapons in violation of international law or chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals. The imposition of CBW Act sanctions follows reports of the use of a “Novichok” nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate UK citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal. There is no indication in the notice regarding the potential for significant additional sanctions (e.g., an export ban, an import ban, an air transportation ban) to be imposed in three months time, as previously described here.