The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in a Dec. 22 opinion denied three Maryland men's post-trial motions seeking dismissal of their convictions, among other things, pertaining to their efforts to illegally export arms and ammunition to Nigeria. The court said Wilson Tita of Owings Mills, Eric Nji of Fort Washington and Wilson Fonguh of Bowie failed to prove that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen rendered unconstitutional the defendants' conviction on a charge of transporting a firearm with an obliterated serial number (U.S. v. Wilson Nuyila Tita).

Companies should closely review the State Department's recently released compliance program guidelines to make sure their own programs are up to date, Hogan Lovells said in a December alert. The firm also said the guidelines, which outlined key elements of an effective compliance program (see 2212060015), give the defense industry, universities and others involved in activities controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations “insight into the regulator’s compliance expectations.” Because the guidelines are similar to those issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, “organizations should expand their policies and procedures to confirm that these elements are captured if they engage in ITAR regulated activities,” the law firm said.

A bill that could move U.S. export control authority from the Commerce Department to the Defense Department reflects a lack of understanding of the export control licensing process and raises a number of questions about the future of U.S. export control regulations, Braumiller Consulting Group said in a recent post. Congress may want to devote more effort to holding Commerce and the Bureau of Industry and Security “accountable” under the Export Control Reform Act “rather than attempting to fix something that is working fine,” said the post, written by Craig McClure, a senior trade adviser with the firm.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will close its Response Team and Help Desk Dec. 26 due to the federal Christmas holiday, the agency said in a notice this week. Both will reopen 8 a.m. Dec. 27. “Due to the closure and depending on volume of inquires received, responses may be delayed through the following week,” DDTC said. “The processing of classified provisos for delivery may also be delayed.”

The Automated Export System soon will incorporate new response code 5C2 for when a commodity line in AES is reported with U.S. Munitions List Category XXI, but a commodity jurisdiction number is not reported, CBP said in a recent CSMS message. The new response message, which will be a fatal error, will be available in certification for testing Jan. 3 and “available in Production at a later date,” CBP said. “A follow-up message will announce when the messages will be active in Certification.”

Arif Ugur, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident, was sentenced to 33 months in prison and two years of supervised release for scheming to illegally export defense technical data to manufacturers in Turkey in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, DOJ announced Dec. 15. The technical data related to the "fraudulent manufacturing of parts and components used by the U.S. military" -- parts the Defense Department later found to be "substandard and unsuitable for use by the military."

The State Department is proposing to expand the definition of activities that are not exports, reexports, retransfers or temporary imports by adding two new entries, the agency said in a notice released Dec. 15. One new entry would be the “taking of defense articles outside a previously approved country by the armed forces of a foreign government” or U.N. personnel on a “deployment or training exercise,” the State Department said. The second entry would be a foreign defense item that enters the U.S. but is subsequently exported under a license, provided it has not been “modified, enhanced, upgraded, or otherwise altered or improved or had a U.S.-origin defense article integrated into it.”

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Mike Miller recently left his position as head of the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls to join the Defense Department as deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, a State Department spokesperson said Dec. 12. Miller previously served as deputy assistant secretary for defense trade in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw a flurry of recent changes and updates to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (see 2211100023, 2209280038, 2204290032 and 2105200061).

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls completed an interagency review for a final rule related to certain license exemptions for allies. The rule, received by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Dec. 2 and completed Dec. 8, would amend the International Traffic in Arms Regulations’ Supplement No. 1 to Part 126 “in support of allies.” DDTC in July announced an open general license pilot to authorize reexports and retransfers of certain defense items and services to Australia, Canada and the U.K. (see 2207190008).