Today, the President signed into law the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (“CAATSA”), a bill that he called “seriously flawed” in a statement about CAATSA issued at the same time he signed the bill.
On July 27, 2017, the US Senate approved in a 98-2 vote H.R. 3364, the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (“H.R. 3364”). We previously summarized H.R. 3364 in our blog posts here and here. H.R. 3364 now goes to the White House where the President will have 10 days to (1) sign the bill, (2) veto the bill, or (3) permit the bill to become law without his signature. The 10-day clock will start when the US Congress delivers H.R. 3364 to the President, which may happen in a few days.
Last month, the US Senate passed significant Russia sanctions legislation as an amendment to an Iran sanctions bill targeting Iran’s ballistic missile program. The Russia sanctions provisions sought to limit the President’s ability to relax existing US sanctions targeting Russia while imposing additional restrictions impacting various sectors of the Russian economy. The key provisions of the Senate bill are summarized in our earlier blog post.
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.