On July 10, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced a series of Iran-related sanctions designations targeting Iranian financial facilitator Ali Ansari and his financial network, as well as several Iranian exchange houses accused of facilitating transactions for sanctioned Iranian banks. Concurrently, OFAC issued General License Y (“GL Y”), authorizing the temporary wind down of transactions involving Smart Global Limited, a newly designated holding company allegedly controlled by Ansari.…
On June 23, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and HM Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”) published a joint statement reflecting on their latest Enhanced Partnership exchange and issued a new joint guidance document that provides a comparative overview of the US and UK sanctions regimes. The joint statement and guidance follow a January 2026 in-person meeting between OFSI and OFAC. The statement and accompanying guidance…
On June 8, 2026, the US Department of Defense (“DoD”) published an update to its list of “Chinese military companies” (“CMCs”) operating directly or indirectly in the United States (the “1260H List”), pursuant to Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (the “NDAA 2021”). The updated list is available here. The DoD press release states that this update is part of the US government’s continuing effort to highlight and counter…
On May 5, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) issued General License No. 58 (“GL 58”), authorizing transactions ordinarily incident to the provision of certain services in connection with potential debt restructuring of the Government of Venezuela. GL 58 provides a limited authorization for specified transactions, subject to conditions and exclusions, and reflects OFAC’s continued use of general licenses to relax US sanctions on Venezuela. Our prior blog…