On May 27, the US Congress approved the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (“S. 3744”), a bill which authorizes the imposition of sanctions on persons, including any official of the Chinese government, determined to be responsible for certain human rights violations and abuses committed against Muslim minority groups in China or elsewhere. The bill, which was approved amidst increasing tensions between the United States and China, now goes to the White House where…
The US Government has taken coordinated actions this week that target Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (“Huawei”), effectively cutting it off from sourcing US products and technology and likely barring its products from being used in US communications infrastructure and networks. The US export/reexport restrictions targeting Huawei took effect immediately on May 16, 2019. The expected prohibition on the use of Huawei products in US communications infrastructure is likely to take several months to implement.
On December 19, 2018, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) submitted a letter to congressional leaders (“Congressional Letter”) notifying Congress of its intent to terminate the sanctions imposed on En+ Group plc (“En+”), UC Rusal plc (“RUSAL”), and JSC EuroSibEnergo (“ESE”) in 30 days. On the same day, OFAC announced new sanctions against a number of individuals and entities for their involvement in a range of malign activities. Concurrently, the US Department of State announced it had added 12 individuals and entities to the List of Specified Persons under Section 231 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (“CAATSA”) for being part of, or operating for or on behalf of, the defense or intelligence sector of the Russian Federation.
On January 29, 2018, the US Treasury Department (“Treasury”) delivered five reports to Congress, as required under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (“CAATSA”). Please see our prior blog post on CAATSA here. Among these reports was a list identifying Russian senior political figures, oligarchs, and parastatal entities pursuant to CAATSA Section 241. This report was released during the same week that other CAATSA sanctions targeting Russia have gone into effect.