A Russian citizen was charged with using his cryptocurrency company Evita to violate U.S. sanctions by funneling over $500 million in overseas payments through U.S. banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a 22-count indictment unsealed by DOJ on June 9. Iurii Gugnin, a resident of New York and a Russian citizen, was charged with wire and bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, among other charges.
The Supreme Court on June 5 said the Mexican government failed to "plausibly allege" that seven U.S. gun manufacturers "aided and abetted gun dealers' unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers." As a result, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) bars the lawsuit, a unanimous court held.
A law firm said May 23 that the U.S. was failing to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act partly because it was relying on a “novelly broad” interpretation of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (Husch Blackwell v. Department of Commerce, D.D.C. # 1:24-02733).
The Bureau of Industry and Security suspended the export privileges of six people after they were convicted of export-related offenses, including illegal shipments to companies owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch and the smuggling of firearms and engine parts to Mexico. The suspensions took effect from the date of their convictions.
Former airline executive Skye Xu was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud Polar Air Cargo Worldwide of more than $32 million, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced on May 15. Xu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services wire fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order aimed at reducing criminal enforcement of federal regulations, but it appears to carve out laws related to national security and defense.
DOJ’s recent decision to decline to prosecute a NASA contractor for export control violations shows that the agency is still planning to reward companies that self-report possible breaches and cooperate with the government, WilmerHale said in a client alert this week.
A former U.S. Army intelligence analyst was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiring to "obtain and disclose national defense information," illegally exporting data related to defense articles to China, and conspiring to illegally export defense articles and bribery, DOJ announced. The analyst, Korbein Schultz, pleaded guilty last year to sending "sensitive, non-public U.S. military information, to an individual he believed was affiliated with the Chinese government," DOJ said.
In an April 9 memorandum, President Donald Trump instructed all "executive departments and agencies" to "identify certain categories of unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations within 60 days" and establish plans to repeal them. The memo told the agencies to review their regulations for compliance with 10 recent Supreme Court decisions, the first of which is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the decision eliminating the concept of deferring to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
The U.K. recently fined three companies more than $4.7 million combined for breaching the country’s export controls on military goods, the country announced April 9.