Debevoise & Plimpton appointed litigation partners Helen Cantwell and David O'Neil co-chairs of the White Collar & Regulatory Defense Group following the end of Bruce Yannett's tenure as chair, the firm announced. Cantwell is a former assistant U.S. attorney and a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit. O'Neil, a former DOJ official, centers his practice on matters involving corporate malfeasance, cybercrime, fraud and money laundering, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, healthcare fraud and securities fraud, the firm said.
The World Trade Organization on Oct. 31 launched an import licensing portal to allow members to draft and submit notifications online. The platform, released during the Committee on Import Licensing Procedures' Oct. 31 meeting, will provide members an "improved database of all import licensing procedures" of WTO countries, allowing members to search by country, product and legislation. Members can assign different levels of access to national authorities to draft, edit or submit their notifications, as well as use the portal to communicate and swap draft notifications and comments with the WTO Secretariat. During the committee meeting, members also reviewed 42 notifications of import licenses, WTO said.
The World Trade Organization said its working group on food security is aiming for the end of November to reach consensus on a final set of recommendations for least-developed countries (LDCs) and net food-importing developing countries (NFIDCs). During the working group's Oct. 31 meeting, participating members revised a report from the group's coordinator, Norway's Kjetil Tysdal, which covers four areas: "access to international food markets, financing of food imports, agricultural and production resilience of LDCs and NFIDCs, and horizontal, cross-cutting issues," the WTO said. Tysdal said he will make further revisions in the "coming days," noting the final meeting is set for Nov. 13, when the group is expected to finalize its recommendations for the full Committee on Agriculture's approval. The committee will meet Nov. 27-29.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a text-only order granted a motion to extend time to file an opening brief from exporters Double Coin Holdings and China Manufacturers Alliance in a case involving a review of the antidumping duty order on off-the-road tires from China. The exporters now have until Nov. 28 to file the opening brief in a case whin ich the Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's decision to assign Double Coin the 105.31% China-wide dumping rate due to the company's failure to rebut the presumption of Chinese state control over its export activities (see 2307200020) (China Manufacturers Alliance v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2391).
The Court of International Trade stayed a customs case concerning importer Cambridge Isotope Laboratories' enriched ammonium sulfate isotope until Dec. 11, given that Cambridge is consulting with the relevant antidumping and countervailing duty petitioners for a "partial revocation of the AD/CVD Orders on Ammonium Sulfide from China." Cambridge filed suit to contest CBP's assessment of the AD/CVD on the imports (see 2308300052) (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. United States, CIT # 23-00080).
Two importers took to the Court of International Trade to challenge the Commerce Department's final determination that Chinese-origin unfinished pipe fittings that undergo final processing in Vietnam are under the scope of the antidumping duty order on carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings from China. The companies, International Piping & Procurement Group and Norca Industrial Co., said in a pair of complaints that Commerce's analysis, which found that the goods were not substantially transformed in Vietnam, was "flawed" and ignored key evidence (International Piping & Procurement Group v. United States, CIT # 23-00232) (Norca Industrial Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00231).
World Trade Organization members' compliance rates with notification requirements for subsidies and countervailing duties remain "concerningly low," according to the chair of the WTO's Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Compliance is crucial to the function of that committee, its chair, New Zealand's James Lester, said Oct. 27.
The Rotterdam District Court on Oct. 31 sentenced an unnamed Russian businessman to an 18-month prison term for violating the EU's Russia sanctions, according to an unofficial translation. The charges against the man include selling dual-use goods, including a "certain type of integrated circuit" and drones to Russian companies, along with selling, delivering, transferring and exporting nine other integrated circuit types to the same unnamed Russian companies.
The U.S. this week unsealed two indictments charging multiple people in schemes to deliver export-controlled dual-use goods to Russia. In both cases, DOJ charged Russian nationals and others with using Brooklyn-based companies to buy goods on behalf of sanctioned end-users or others connected to Russia's military.