What happened? On January 17, 2024, the US State Department (“State”) announced the designation of Ansarallah, commonly known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (“SDGT”) pursuant to Executive Order 13224. The designation will be effective on February 16, 2024, at which time the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) will add Ansarallah to the list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (“SDN List”). In other words, the designation…
On December 7, 2023, the United States Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued three new rules as a broad effort to ease export control requirements under the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) for key allied and partner countries. These rules were enacted in order to reduce the licensing requirement to export, reexport, and transfer US goods, software, and technology to and between allies and partners of the United States. The new rules are…
In the past week, both the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) in the US Treasury Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) took steps related to Hamas, which they indicated were linked to the recent Hamas attacks on Israel. New OFAC Sanctions On October 18, 2023, OFAC added a number of parties determined to be connected to Hamas to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (“SDN”). As described in the…
On June 1, 2023, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) added four (4) entities to the Specialty Designated Nationals (“SDN”) List under Executive Order 14098 (“EO 14098”) and issued four general licenses (“GLs”) authorizing certain transactions involving Sudan. For more information on EO 14098, see our previous blog post available here. We summarize the four GLs below that authorize certain activities and transactions involving SDNs designated under EO 14098.…