The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 26 people and entities with ties to the terrorist group al-Shabaab, including 15 “financial facilitators and operatives,” four smugglers of charcoal from Somalia and seven of their associated companies. OFAC said the designations target “key regional leaders, affiliates, and members” of the terrorist group in Somalia. Among those sanctioned are al-Shabaab commanders, an intelligence officer, a donations collector and various charcoal traders and their companies.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned four entities and one person involved in “obfuscated revenue generation” and cyber activities to support the North Korean government. The designations target the Pyongyang University of Automation, one of North Korea’s “premier cyber instruction institutions,” along with the Technical Reconnaissance Bureau and its "subordinate cyber unit," the 110th Research Center, which are controlled by North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, the country’s intelligence bureau. OFAC also sanctioned Chinyong Information Technology Cooperation Company, which employs delegations of North Korean information technology workers in Russia and Laos, as well as North Korean national ​​Kim Sang Man, who helps pay salaries to family members of Chinyong’s overseas workers.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control again renewed a general license authorizing certain transactions between certain companies and Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., Venezuela’s state-run energy company. General License No. 8L, which replaces No. 8K (see 2211280042), authorizes transactions between PdVSA and Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International, with certain restrictions, through 12:01 a.m. EST Nov. 19. The license was scheduled to expire May 26.

Members of Congress need to be mindful of what their proposals to regulate outbound investment might mean for U.S. businesses, one of the experts on a Washington International Trade Association webinar cautioned.

The Treasury Department could use more resources and needs to better recruit and retain employees to implement and enforce its sanctions programs, said Brian Nelson, the agency’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. Nelson, speaking during a law conference in Washington last week, said the agency is specifically looking to hire more officials to help it grapple with how best to apply sanctions in the virtual assets space and other emerging industries, including around artificial intelligence.

The U.S. announced a host of new Russia-related sanctions and export controls last week, including more than 300 sanctions designations by the Treasury and State departments and an expansion of Commerce Department export controls on items destined to Russia and entities supporting the country’s military. The measures, some of which were coordinated with allies as part of the Group of 7 summit in Japan, aim to “further undermine Russia’s capacity to wage its illegal aggression” in Ukraine, the G-7 countries said in a May 19 joint statement.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published previously issued General License O under its Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations. The full text of the license is available in the notice.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control reached a $3.3 million settlement this week with a California-based skincare company and a $175,000 settlement with its former unnamed senior executive for illegal exports to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. Murad, owned by multinational company Unilever, worked with distributors in Iran and the United Arab Emirates to ship goods to Iran, leading to at least 62 exports worth more than $11 million, OFAC said.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control amended and replaced its South Sudan Sanctions Regulations to “further implement” a 2014 executive order. The new, “more comprehensive” set of regulations includes “additional interpretive and definitional guidance, general licenses, and other regulatory provisions that will provide further guidance to the public,” OFAC said. The changes take effect May 18.

A series of export control indictments announced this week, including several for illegal shipments to China and Russia, only scratched the surface of prosecutions expected to be brought as part of the new Disruptive Technology Strike Force, said Matthew Axelrod, the Bureau of Industry and Security's top export enforcement official. “It’s just the beginning,” Axelrod said during a May 17 law conference hosted by the American Bar Association, Mayer Brown and American University. “I think you can expect to continue to see actions come out from the strike force as this work continues.”