Over the past week, various reports from news outlets and other sources have suggested that some of the restrictions on the movements of goods between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar imposed by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt (Boycotting States) in June 2017 as part of the boycott on Qatar have been partially lifted. This followed a revised Direction issued by the Abu Dhabi Ports earlier in February 2019 and an almost…
The Swiss Government recently announced that licences will no longer be permitted for war materials (“Kreigsmaterial”) exported to end users in Lebanon. Previously, a licence could be obtained for war materials supplied to groups responsible for the protection of Politically Exposed Persons, subject to a declaration of no re-export without written Swiss permission and on-site checks. The change in approach resulted from a post-shipment verification in 2018, which allowed only for the physical verification of…
On 28 February 2019, the USTR published a paper summarising its “specific negotiating objectives” for negotiating a trade agreement with the UK post-Brexit (available here). The paper starts by stating that that the US’s “aim in negotiations with the UK is to address both tariff and non-tariff barriers and to achieve fairer and deeper trade”. The US objectives notably include: greater access to the UK market for US agricultural products; comprehensive duty-free access for US…
On 25 February 2019, OFSI announced that it had imposed its first civil monetary penalty, almost two years after it gained the power to impose fines under the Policing and Crime Act 2017. The GBP 5,000 penalty was imposed on R. Raphael & Sons plc, one of the UK’s oldest independent private lenders, for processing a GBP 200 transfer to a sanctioned associate of the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in breach of the Egypt…