The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) announced final rules effective November 9, 2017, implementing the National Security Presidential Memorandum (“NSPM“) “Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward Cuba,” signed by President Trump on June 16, 2017. These final rules are available here and here. Concurrent with the announcement of the final rules, OFAC and BIS each issued new and updated Cuba FAQs (available here and here). OFAC also issued a Fact Sheet explaining the amendments resulting from its Final Rule.
On June 20, 2017, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) announced that it had added 38 individuals and entities to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (“SDN List”) and 20 entities to the Sectoral Sanctions Identification List (“SSI List”) under US sanctions targeting Russia and Crimea. On June 21, 2017, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) also announced that it would add some of these SDN entities to the Entity List.
Ending several weeks of speculation about a shift in US policy towards Cuba, on June 16, 2017, President Trump announced changes reversing some of the steps undertaken by the Obama administration to ease the decades-long US embargo of that country. He has directed US government agencies, including the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), which is responsible for the administration of the US sanctions against Cuba, to “initiate a process to adjust” their respective regulations within 30 days to implement the changes. Importantly, FAQs issued by OFAC clarify that the 30-day deadline is only to begin the process of amending the regulations and that the announced changes will not take effect until new or amended regulations are issued. Otherwise, no deadline for when the regulations must be amended is specified and OFAC states only that it “expects to issue its regulatory amendments in the coming months.”
On April 18, 2017, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) issued a final rule revising the Entity List entry for the Russian Federal Security Service (“FSB”), Russia’s principal security agency, in order to permit certain exports, reexports, and in-country transfers to the FSB without a BIS license in conformance with Cyber-related General License No. 1 (“General License No. 1”), which was issued by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) on February 2, 2017. Today’s change by BIS should further alleviate concerns of US technology companies that need to deal with the FSB in its regulatory role in approving the import, distribution, and use of encryption products in Russia.