The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on April 1 granted the New Zealand government's motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction banning its fish exports in a challenge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2020 findings that New Zealand's standards for its West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries were comparable to U.S. regulations.
Latvian citizen Oleg Chistyakov was charged with violating U.S. export laws as part of a scheme to ship "sophisticated avionics equipment" to Russian companies, DOJ announced last week. The agency noted Chistyakov is the third person to be charged in connection to the scheme, which was led by Kansas company KanRus Trading Co.
Switzerland-based international commodities trading firm Trafigura Beheer will pay over $126 million after pleading guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Brazilian government officials to obtain business with state-owned oil company Petrobras, DOJ announced.
Paulo Perez-Mendoza of Stockton, California, was charged March 28 with conspiracy to "receive and sell smuggled pesticides" into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California announced.
The Court of International Trade on March 26 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2020-21 antidumping duty review on hot-rolled steel flat products from Japan. Judge Stephen Vaden said that since no party contests the remand results, which were voluntarily requested by Commerce so the agency could treat exporter Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co. as a mandatory respondent, the case is upheld (Optima Steel International v. U.S., CIT # 23-00108).
The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
The World Trade Organization's Committee on Market Access laid out a "timetable" for its thematic sessions in 2024 at a March 25-26 meeting, the WTO announced. The sessions will center on "supply chain resilience" and boosting a greener Harmonized System in collaboration with the World Customs Organization.
The U.K. High Court of Justice on March 27 ruled that VTB Commodites, the commodities wing of sanctioned bank VTB Bank, doesn't have "any right of redemption" in escrow payments in a dispute over the ownership of vacuum gas oil (VGO) cargo.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month granted the U.S. motion for forfeiture of about $17 million from Iraqi airline Al-Naser Airlines, representing the amount of laundered payments involved in the company's scheme to evade export controls and sanctions by "illicitly procuring U.S.-origin aircraft for the benefit of an Iranian airline [Mahan Air]." The court said that the government "fulfilled its notice obligations" prior to a forfeiture and that the complaint against the airline's funds contains verified allegations that "establish the facts necessary to support a civil forfeiture" (U.S. v. $3,435,935 of Funds From Al-Naser Airlines, D.D.C. # 15-01687).