The U.S. needs to create a formal doctrine to outline guardrails for deploying sanctions, export controls and other economic statecraft tools, said Daleep Singh, President Joe Biden’s former deputy national security adviser, speaking during an April 25 Atlantic Council event. He also said the U.S. needs to conduct an assessment of its past use of those trade and financial measures to determine when they worked best and make sure they aren’t being overused.
The EU made new sanctions listings under three regimes, the European Council announced. Under the anti-terrorism list, the council added two individuals and one group linked to ISIL operating in the Cabo Delgado region in Mozambique. The group is ISIS-Mozambique and the two individuals are Abu Yasir Hassan and Bonomade Mahcude Omar, who hold leadership positions in the group.
The U.S. sent a Treasury Department official to Europe last week to discuss Russian sanctions evasion tactics with Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Germany, including ways those countries’ governments, business groups and banks can identify red flags. Brian Nelson, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, shared the “most critical inputs” that Russia is looking to backfill -- including optics, electronics, and manufacturing equipment -- and shared the “emerging sanctions evasion typologies” Russia is using to evade sanctions and export controls, Treasury said.
EU member states are split over whether to introduce a new anti-corruption sanctions regime, the EU Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights heard this week. Advocates during the hearing urged the bloc to establish the regime, saying it would further align EU trade controls with the U.S. and help the EU more quickly and easily sanction Russian oligarchs.
The U.K. added three names to its Russia sanctions list on April 21. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said Russian government officials Andrey Zadachin, Denis Kolesnikov and Elena Lenskaya were all involved in the "politically motivated case" against Russian journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza. The U.S. issued similar sanctions in March (see 2303030021).
DOJ will look to further crack down on Russian sanctions evasion by zeroing in on overseas investment advisers, hedge funds, law firms and private equity managers that have so far evaded scrutiny, Andrew Adams, head of DOJ's Task Force KleptoCapture, told Bloomberg. KleptoCapture is the interagency group charged with enforcing U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Sergey Karpushkin, a U.S. businessman and Belarussian national, was charged with participating in a scheme to violate U.S. sanctions on Russian oligarch Sergey Kurchenko and two of his related companies by buying over $150 million in steelmaking materials, DOJ announced April 19. The Belarussian is the second to be charged in the scheme after John Unsalan, president of building materials supplier Metalhouse, was hit with similar charges earlier this week (see 2304180033).
G-7 ambassadors sent a letter to the Swiss Federal Council laying out their concerns that Russians are exploiting Swiss privacy laws to hide billions of francs in offshore assets, the Financial Times reported. The letter said "law enforcement officials are blocked from investigating illicit financial structures" due to "privacy protections,” and Swiss officials “were unable to freeze assets under protections for dual nationals, legal residents, those with legal ties to Swiss entities, or those holding indirect beneficial ownership." The ambassadors said the loopholes "put Switzerland at reputational risk." The Swiss council said there is no basis for the concerns.
Nations allowing the export to Russia of dual-use products that have military as well as commercial applications are on notice, Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves said April 19 at the Space Foundation's 2023 Space Symposium. "Any country ... that seeks to backfill the Russian war machine ... does so at their own peril," he warned. Export controls by the U.S. and 38 other nations aimed at dual-use products such as semiconductors and lasers are "hobbling" the Russian war effort in Ukraine, he said.
John Unsalan, the president of building materials supplier Metalhouse, was arrested and charged with violating U.S. sanctions on oligarch Sergey Kurchenko and two of Kurchenko's companies by providing them with over $150 million for steel-making materials, DOJ announced April 17. Unsalan faces 10 counts of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, one count of conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, one count of conspiring to commit international money laundering and 10 counts of international money laundering, each of which comes with a maximum 10-year prison sentence.