The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Slovakian national Ashot Mkrtychev for trying to facilitate arms deals between Russia and North Korea. Mkrtychev worked with North Korean officials, including as recently as this year, to “obtain” more than two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions for Russia in exchange for commercial aircraft, raw materials and other commodities, OFAC said. The agency said Mkrtychev negotiated a “mutually beneficial cooperation” agreement between North Korea and Russia “to include financial payments and barter arrangements,” and “confirmed Russia’s readiness to receive military equipment from [North Korea] with senior Russian officials.”
The U.K.'s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation issued a new Russia-related general license authorizing certain transactions involving bond amendments and restructurings. The license lets a company, entity or institution that has issued a bond that has or may have bondholders who are sanctioned parties "effect the terms of any Bond restructuring or amendments agreed between itself and its Bondholders" through March 28, 2025. This permission only applies if no funds or economic resources are made available to a designated party as part of any such bond restructuring and any funds that a designated party would be entitled to are frozen and not made available to the designated party until they are no longer sanctioned. The license also permits a British person or entity to take any steps needed to "effect a bond restructuring," as long as the same two conditions listed previously also apply.
The EU plans to launch a new project with nine member states to root out gaps in the bloc's Russia sanctions regime and boost coordination between national authorities when imposing penalties, Bloomberg reported March 29. The project, which will deepen ties between the European Commission and member state governments, could lay the groundwork for a new EU body to coordinate sanctions implementation, the officials said. The new project, to run for two years starting around June, would be the first instance of the EU's executive wing backing member states on sanctions enforcement at this scale, the Bloomberg report said.
The EU and the U.K. are stepping up Russia sanctions enforcement, mirroring U.S. efforts to increase prosecutions and designations of companies helping Moscow evade trade restrictions, two Europe-based lawyers said this week. They said European countries are increasingly taking steps to expand the extraterritorial reach of their sanctions authorities, warning companies to make sure they’re conducting careful due diligence.
The U.S. should tighten its export controls to prevent Russia from acquiring U.S. technologies through international space cooperation activities, said Benjamin Schmitt, a national security and export control researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Schmitt, speaking during a March 29 event hosted by the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. specifically needs to impose more restrictions around what types of items it shares with Russians in the International Space Station context.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week added 11 entities in China, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Russia to the Entity List for various activities that have contributed to human rights abuses, the agency said in a final rule effective March 28. The entities include procurement firms, a police entity and technology and electronics companies, including several subsidiaries of Chinese surveillance company Hikvision, which was added to the Entity List in 2019 (see 2205090014).
The Biden administration this week plans to “unveil” new human rights-related export control measures as part of the second Summit for Democracy, a senior administration official said. The measures will show how the U.S. and its allies have so far implemented the Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative, an effort announced at the first democracy summit in 2021 that was designed to lead to better guardrails on exports of surveillance items and other technologies (see 2112090030).
Finland permitted a Russian fertilizer shipment to be shipped through EU territory and exported to a third country to "promote food security," the country said last week. Although EU sanctions don't prohibit imports or the transit of fertilisers from Russia, Finland said it seized the shipment earlier this month because the country suspected it of being owned by a sanctioned Russian person, and member states "must freeze the funds and economic resources owned or controlled by sanctioned individuals." The country's foreign ministry released the shipment after receiving a "request for authorization" from the purchaser. The authorisation was "granted under the condition that the fertilisers are exported to a third country to promote food security," Finland said.
A Washington, D.C., court last week rejected a Russian citizen’s bid to dismiss government accusations that he misled investors about his company’s “key” space technology and several U.S. “adverse national security determinations” against the company. The ruling came after the Securities and Exchange Commission said Mikhail Kokorich, former CEO of space industry startup Momentus, made several “misrepresentations, false statements, and material omissions” in merger discussions with another firm, failing to disclose that the Commerce Department had rejected at least one of his company's export license applications and planned to deny another (SEC v. Mikhail Kokorich, D.D.C. # 21-1869).