The State Department designated Amadou Kouffa a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, according to a notice. Kouffa was previously added to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals List for his involvement with a West African terrorist group (see 1911070035).
Australia's parliament announced an inquiry to examine whether the country should adopt sanctions on human rights violations, the parliament said in a Dec. 4 press release. Kevin Andrews, a member of parliament and chair of the government’s Human Rights Subcommittee, said the inquiry will focus on Australia's current sanctions laws, its ability to impose sanctions on foreign actors committing human rights violations, its enforcement methods and a comparison to other jurisdictions to determine whether Australia's sanctions laws can be strengthened.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 17 people and seven entities, including Russia-based Evil Corp, for acting as “malicious cyber-enabled actors,” according to a Dec. 5 press release. Evil Corp is a “cybercriminal” organization responsible for the development of Dridex malware, which infects computers to harvest login credentials from “hundreds” of banks in more than 40 countries, leading to more than $100 million in theft, Treasury said. Evil Corp’s actions have caused “millions of dollars of damage” to U.S. and international financial institutions, including their customers, the press release said.
The State Department sanctioned Alejandro Sinibaldi, Guatemala’s former minister of communications, infrastructure, and housing, for “significant corruption,” according to a Dec. 3 press release. The State Department is also sanctioning family members Maria Jose Saravia Mendoza, Alejandro Sinibaldi Saravia and his two minor children.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control identified and sanctioned six ships belonging to Petroleos de Venezuela, Venezuela's sanctioned state-owned energy company, Treasury said in a Dec. 3 press release. The agency also identified the vessel Esperanza as blocked property of Caroil Transport Marine Ltd., which was sanctioned by OFAC in September. Esperanza was previously listed on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List as “Nedas,” Treasury said.
The State Department is removing sanctions on Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan national and “key middleman” of the A.Q. Khan nuclear procurement network that was sanctioned in 2009, the agency said Dec. 2. Tahir was sanctioned under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Prevention Act and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, the agency said. The agency did not provide a reason the sanctions were being removed.
The State Department sanctioned the Iran Space Agency, the Iran Space and Research Center and the Astronautics Research Institute for activities relating to weapons proliferation, manufacture, transport and use, according to a Dec. 2 notice. The sanctions block all U.S. property belong to the agency, property of people or companies who exported goods or provided support to the agencies and any companies owned by the agencies. The notice provides primary and alternative addresses for each of the agencies, which are based in Iran.
A U.S. electronics and computer component company may have violated U.S. sanctions on Iran and Syria, the company said in a Nov. 7 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Colorado-based Arrow Electronics said a “limited number of non-executive employees … facilitated product shipment” to customers for re-export to people covered by U.S. sanctions on Iran and Syria. The transactions took place between 2015 and 2019 and were valued at about $5,000, the company said. Arrow Electronics said it voluntarily disclosed the potential violations to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls and the Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security earlier this year. It also disciplined or fired employees involved in the transactions and said it plans to “cooperate fully” with BIS and OFAC. The company said it is not able to “estimate” the potential penalty it may receive.
The Treasury Department is seeking comments on an information collection that extends a currently approved collection designating North Korea as a “Jurisdiction of Primary Money Laundering Concern,” according to a notice. The designation bans banks and other financial institutions from opening accounts in the U.S. on behalf of a North Korean bank and processing North Korean transactions, the notice said. Comments are due Dec. 30.
The U.S. is continuing sanctions on Nicaragua, the White House said Nov. 25. Nicaraguan officials' use of violence, “dismantling” of democratic institutions and corruption continue to “pose an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy, the White House said.