Dec.27.2019 As 2019 draws to an end, Congress has been busy on economic sanctions legislation. This includes passing new Russia-related sanctions and a Venezuela-related government contracts procurement restriction as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA 2020). The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also approved two new pieces of legislation that would increase sanctions on Russia and Turkey, respectively. Full details on each of these developments are below the…

On Friday, October 25, 2019 the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act finding Iran to be a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern and imposing special measures prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from maintaining correspondent accounts for or on behalf of Iran. Separately on Friday, the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and State announced the rollout of a new mechanism to facilitate humanitarian trade…

On September 9, 2019, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) published amendments to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (the “Cuba Sanctions”) to limit “U-turn” transactions and remittances. “U-turn” transaction is a reference to a Cuba Sanctions authorization (31 CFR § 515.584(d)) for banking institutions subject to U.S. jurisdiction to process transactions prohibited by the Cuba Sanctions if the transaction originated and terminated outside the United States, and the originator and…

On August 28, 2019 the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced the launch of a Global Investigations Division (GID), which will be led by Matthew Stiglitz, a former Principal Deputy Chief in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Criminal Division. The GID replaces and expands on FinCEN’s Office of Special Measures (OSM), which was a part of FinCEN’s Enforcement Division. On September 3, 2019, FinCEN also announced that AnnaLou Tirol would depart…

Over the course of the last week, the United States has escalated its sanctions programs targeting Russia and Venezuela. It began by implementing the long-delayed second round of sanctions on Russia mandated by the Chemical and Biological Weapons Act of 1991 (CBW Act) on Saturday, August 3, 2019. While the CBW sanctions will have a limited impact on most companies, the same cannot be said of the issuance of Executive Order 13884 (“E.O. 13884”) on…

  The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is known for imposing hefty penalties for violations of US economic sanctions, with individual violations amounting to up to US $295,141 or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, per prohibited transaction, and overall penalties sometimes running into the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars. Despite this, OFAC historically has not provided much guidance for companies on the…