The Justice Department settled its lawsuit with Chancery Staffing Solutions over claims of improper screening of non-U.S. citizens, the DOJ said in a Feb. 18 news release. The suit involved allegations that “the staffing company violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) when, at a law firm client’s directive, it screened out work authorized non-U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens with dual citizenship from a document review project without a lawful basis.”
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls officially launched the registration and licensing applications for its Defense Export Control and Compliance System (see 2002040060) on Feb. 18. Users can register at the DECCS industry portal enrollment page, which also includes an enrollment guide.
The State Department announced penalties on foreign entities for illegal transfers under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act, the agency said in a notice. The entities transferred items subject to multilateral control lists -- such as the Wassenaar Arrangement -- that contribute to weapons proliferation or missile production. The entities mentioned in the notice include companies based in China, Iraq, Russia and Turkey and are barred from purchasing items controlled on the U.S. Munitions List and by the Arms Export Control Act. In addition, the State Department will suspend any current export licenses used by the companies; State will bar them from receiving new export licenses for any goods subject to the Export Administration Regulations; and government agencies are barred from entering into procurement contracts with them. The measures took effect Feb. 3.
Traders who use the “batch submission process” to send license information to the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls need to receive the latest version of the client software from OCR Services before the Defense Export Control and Compliance System is launched, the DDTC said Feb. 13. The updated client version contains “necessary revisions” for submitting in batch, the DDTC said. DECCS will launch Feb. 18 (see 2002040060).
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Feb. 3-7 in case you missed them.
As the final regulations for the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act take effect this week, FIRRMA’s definition for critical technologies remains unclear due to a lack of proposed rules by the Commerce Department on emerging and foundational technologies, trade lawyers said.
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will host a Defense Export Control and Compliance System webinar to cover the process for enrolling an organization’s current DTrade Super Users as DECCS Corporate Administrators, the DDTC said Feb. 7. The webinar, which will be held Feb. 13 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., will also cover how to invite “team members to join a company” and how to set up “License Groups,” DDTC said. The notice provides log-in information for the webinar. The registration and licensing applications for DECCS will launch Feb. 18 (see 2002040060).
A Chinese national and former Raytheon engineer was charged with violating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations after he took a company laptop with sensitive military technology data to China, according to an indictment filed Jan. 29. Wei Sun, who worked as an electrical engineer for Raytheon Missile Systems from 2009 to 2019, had access to “advanced and sensitive defense-related technology” on his laptop, the indictment said, and his trip overseas constituted an illegal export of ITAR-controlled defense articles. Sun’s computer contained controlled data covered under Categories 4 (launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs and mines) and 11 (military electronics) of the ITAR, including a “Field Programmable Gate Array,” according to an unsealed complaint.
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will launch the registration and licensing applications for its Defense Export Control and Compliance System on Feb. 18, the DDTC said Feb. 3. Until then, DDTC said users should “continue to process requests as normal.” Users can enroll on the DDTC website. DDTC recently released a recording of its Jan. 14 DECCS webinar (see 2001230011).
Airbus agreed to pay more than $3.9 billion in combined penalties for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the Justice Department said Jan. 31. The bribery charges, levied by U.S., French and United Kingdom authorities, stem from Airbus’s scheme to bribe non-governmental airline executives and government officials, including officials in China, to retain aircraft contracts.