BREAKING NEWS: North Pole spokeself Mr. Elf E. McElfface contacted Export Law Blog with unsettling information. Apparently Donner and Blitzen are under the weather meaning that Santa will have to make his annual Christmas Eve run with six reindeer instead of his normal complement of eight. As readers will recall from the Press Release posted below back in 2016, OFAC’s rules were amended to permit Santa to visit both the United States and Cuba, provided that he went to Cuba first and only gave Cuban children EAR99 gifts. Otherwise, he would be landing in the United States with a sleigh contain ..read more

So, if you and I went to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, half of which is in Derby Line, Vermont, and the other half of which is in Stanstead, Québec, we would think of it as a clever gimmick designed to attract tourists to boring little towns with little else to offer. But, were you and I genius criminals, we would see it as a venue for the perfect crime. Here’s why. If you’re from Canada, you park in Canada, and you can walk to the only entrance on the U.S. side without clearing Canadian or U.S customs. And it’s the same thing on the way out if you go straight back to your car in ..read more

BIS recently announced a settlement with Mohawk Global Logistics Corporation for $155,000 ($20,000 of which was suspended if Mohawk behaved itself during a probationary period).   The penalty arose out of Mohawk’s export of items to institutions on the Entity List without the required license.  In both instances, Mohawk screened against the list, but things went wrong. One of the exports went to the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (“UESTC”).  Rather than screen against the full name of the university, Mohawk just screened the university’s common ..read more

I wrote earlier this month on a State Department press release finding that Russia had used chemical weapons in the attacks on Sergei and Yulia Skirpal in the United Kingdom and that, accordingly, sanctions would be imposed on Russia pursuant to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (the “CBW Act”). That act requires the imposition of five sanctions, although the President has the authority to waive any or all of the sanctions based on national security considerations. On Monday, the State Department published a notice in the Federal Register imposing ..read more

Last week the State Department changed its travel advisory on Cuba from “reconsider travel” to “exercise increased caution.”  The “reconsider travel” warning was apparently based on the sonic attacks on diplomats in Cuba.  The decision to change to “exercise increased caution” came after the State Department concluded that sonic attacks on private U.S. citizens was unlikely. Still this business of travel warnings appear to have little, if any, relation to the actual safety of the destination.  There are no warnings about the safety of travel to Belize even though between 2009 ..read more

The John McCain National Defense Authorization Act of 2018,  in addition to passing the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (“FIRRMA”), which reforms the CFIUS process, also enacted the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (“ECRA”). That name is, I think, something of a misnomer given what the ECRA actually does. Perhaps a better name would have been the Export Administration Act Reenactment Act. After Congress in 1994 was unable to renew the Export Administration Act (“EAA”), which was the statutory authority for the parts of the U.S. export control regime coveri ..read more

The Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (“FIRRMA”), just signed into law as part of the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 (“NDAA”), will change significantly the way in which the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) reviews foreign investments. It expands the definition of transactions covered by the process, makes the review process mandatory for certain of these transactions, and imposes a filing fee equal to the lesser of $300,000 or one percent of the value of the transaction. Prior to FIRRMA, the definition of ..read more

According to a State Department press release released today, the United States has made a determination that Russia used novichok, a chemical warfare agent, in an attack on British soil and, as a result, the US will impose sanctions on Russia under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (the “CBWC Act”), 22 U.S.C. § 5601 et seq.  The text of these sanctions was not released.  Instead, the text will be in a Federal Register notice expected to be published on or around August 22.  The sanctions will be effective a ..read more

Just hours before Defense Distributed, pursuant to a Settlement Agreement with the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, planned to upload plans to allow anyone who can afford a 3-D printer to make their own plastic guns, a federal district court in Seattle entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the uploading of those plans.   The temporary restraining order was entered at the request of attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia.   In entering the order, the court stated that the plaintiffs were likely to pr ..read more

Prosecutions for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) might kindly be thought of as press ops for prosecutors and catnip for reporters.  And the recent indictment of Maria Butina certainly fits that description:  Spies!  Sex!  Twitter exchanges!  Red Sparrow!  A duped “boyfriend”!!!  Sell me the movie rights now. On the other hand, economic sanctions prosecutions are boring.  Specially Designated Nationals . . . yawn.  The International Emergency Economic Powers Act . . . big yawn. But the, ahem, sex appeal of a ..read more