The Unverified List, the Commerce Department’s listing of foreign companies subject to restrictions on all items included in the Export Administration Regulations, has received increased attention as a result of the recent addition of 33 Chinese industrial and technology companies to the list. Read how George Thompson, International Trade Attorney, explains what the Unverified List…
Sanctions imposed on Russia by the BIS The February 24 sanctions imposed on Russia by the BIS have put in place a vastly expanded definition of the foreign-direct product rule, which will pose significant compliance challenges. In the following transcript George Thompson details which products are affected by the new rule and how it will…
The Unverified List The Commerce Department’s listing of foreign companies subject to restrictions on all items included in the Export Administration Regulations, has received increased attention as a result of the recent addition of 33 Chinese industrial and technology companies to the list. The following transcript from George Thompson‘s video, explains what the Unverified List…
Owner of Maryland Export Business Sentenced to Federal Prison for Attempting to Smuggle Items Out of the U.S. Without the Required Export License Baltimore, Maryland – U.S. District Judge George L. Russell, III today sentenced Jorge Orencel, age 65, of Silver Spring, Maryland, to six months in federal prison, followed by one year of supervised…
The Foreign-Direct Product Rule is a provision of the Export Administration Regulations The following transcript from George W. Thompson, explains the criteria under which some foreign products are subject to the EAR and are thereby within the scope of export controls even if they have no physical U.S. origin content. Hello again, this is George…
Key Points On March 7, 2022, new U.S. export controls applicable to “cybersecurity items” took effect based on an interim final rule published by BIS on October 21, 2021 (the “Cyber Rule”). The controls under the Cyber Rule are complex because they restrict exports intended for malicious cyber activities and to certain countries and governments, but…
The U.S. Commerce Department, through its Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), publicly identified commercial and private aircraft that have flown into Russia in apparent violation of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). In so doing, BIS is notifying the public that providing any form of service to these aircraft requires authorization. Absent such authorization, any…
ITAR or EAR A United States manufacturer of electronic test and measurement equipment and software mistakenly exported ITAR-controlled software under the EAR instead, resulting in a Consent Agreement and civil penalty of $6,600,000. In the following transcript George W. Thompson, International Trade Attorney discusses the consequences of this error and how it could have been…
It’s my long-held position that technology controls present the most challenging export compliance challenge. Last month’s consent agreement between the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and Honeywell International illustrates my point quite well. As we’ll discuss, Honeywell fell into three of the most common traps for unauthorized exports of controlled information. Companies subject to the International Traffic…
OFAC and BIS regulations SAP, a German multinational software corporation with a significant U.S. presence, recently settled allegations that it violated OFAC and BIS regulations concerning exports of software, upgrades, and patches from the United States to Iran and Iranian companies. The settlement amounts totaled in excess of $6.4 million. In the following transcript George…
Although historically less attention-grabbing than sanctions, US export controls have been progressively newsworthy in recent years–starting with the Trump administration’s headlining restrictions aimed at Huawei, initiated in May 2019. More recently, the US government’s focus on China’s military modernization appears to have a driven a spate of China-focused export controls launched by the US Department…
Amendments to the Export Administration Regulations may seem so dry and pedantic to non-specialists. The bureaucratic jargon, references to dry-as-dust sub-subsections, and wooden prose can mask legal changes with important consequences. I’ll leave it to you, Gentle Readers, to consider whether the Bureau of Industry and Security’s three new and proposed rules restricting trade with…