Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

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On July 20, 2021, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo held a virtual roundtable discussion with six former U.S. government sanctions leaders from the last three presidential Administrations to discuss the application of U.S. economic and financial sanctions. The roundtable comes as part of a series of discussions Deputy Secretary Adeyemo is leading to…

On July 19, 2021, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added six Russian entities to the Entity List for their relation to the Russian government’s “harmful foreign activities” that present a threat to the United States’ national security, foreign policy, and economy. Specifically, the entities were added to the Entity List…

May 13, 2021 / 5:30 PM – 6:45 PM EST

Please join this free Thomas Reuters-sponsored webinar with a panel of experts, including Crowell & Moring Counsel Nicole Succar, as they discuss economic sanctions policy and enforcement under the Biden Administration, including what’s happened in the first four months and what we can expect…

On April 19, 2021, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) issued Belarus General License 2H (“GL 2H”) revoking General License 2G (“GL 2G”), which was due to expire on April 25, 2021.

For more than five years, OFAC regularly extended GL 2 G, and earlier versions of it, authorizing U.S. person activity with the…

On April 15, 2021, the United States unveiled a sweeping series of additional sanctions on Russia, marking the first major Russia-related sanctions development of the Biden Administration and the most material such U.S. action in several years.  The actions were spearheaded by President Biden’s issuance of an as-yet-unnumbered Executive Order (the “EO”) that grants the…

On March 2, 2021, the Biden Administration announced the intelligence community’s finding that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) used a banned chemical nerve agent to poison Russian opposition leader, Aleksey Navalny.  Shortly following the White House’s press briefing, the Departments of State, Commerce, and Treasury issued press releases announcing new sanctions and export controls, summarized…

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently announced settlements with two virtual currency service providers, Bit Pay, Inc. (Bit Pay) and BitGo, Inc. (BitGo), for alleged sanctions violations. Separately, Coinbase Global Inc., (Coinbase) the largest virtual currency exchange in the U.S., has disclosed that its services may have been…

Less than three weeks after the group’s initial addition to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the Biden administration removed Ansarallah (the Houthis in Yemen) from the list on February 16, 2021.  As a result, Ansarallah is no longer blocked pursuant to OFAC’s Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations and U.S. persons do not require authorization from…

In the first material sanctions-related action of the new U.S. Administration, on February 11, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14014 (EO) imposing sanctions on Myanmar (Burma) in response to the February 1, 2021, military coup and subsequent detention of government leaders, politicians, and others there. The sanctions focus on the defense sector of the…

On January 27, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 1A, “Authorizing Transactions Involving Securities of Certain Communist Chinese Military Companies,” (“GL 1A”) which amends and replaces General License 1 that had been initially issued on January 8, 2021.  OFAC has also published related frequently asked…