Stephanie Connor, former assistant chief counsel at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is starting a new position as assistant director of OFAC's policy division, she announced on LinkedIn. Connor joined OFAC in 2022.
Turkish national Taskin Torlak was arrested Nov. 2 for allegedly conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by scheming to ship oil from Venezuela to benefit the country's state-owned oil and natural gas company Petroleos de Venezuela, DOJ announced.
Brian Assi, a Middle East-based salesman of a heavy machinery manufacturer, was convicted last week of violating sanctions against Iran after he tried to export U.S.-made drills to Iran without licenses from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
An indictment was unsealed on Oct. 22 charging Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps brigadier general Ruhollah Bazghandi and members of his network with sanctions evasion, among other charges, in their efforts to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin in New York City, DOJ announced.
The U.S. on Oct. 15 urged the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to dismiss a lawsuit from nonprofit advocacy group Texas for Israel and its members challenging the constitutionality of the Biden administration's West Bank-related sanctions authority.
Diego Ortega, former sanctions regulations adviser at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has joined Faegre Drinker as a government and regulatory counsel, the firm announced. Ortega worked for over three years at OFAC, where he drafted and published regulations implementing U.S. sanctions authorities and general licenses.
The District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Oct. 1 unsealed an indictment against Russian citizen Aleksandr Ryzhenkov, the "second-in-command" of the Russian cybercriminal group Evil Corp., for using the BitPaymer ransomware variant against various U.S. individuals to "hold their sensitive data for ransom," DOJ announced.
A Russian citizen living in North Georgia, Feliks Medvedev, was sentenced on Oct. 2 to three years and 10 months in prison for conducting an "unlicensed money transmitting business," which saw the transfer of over $150 million in Russian money. Medvedev was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison sentence and told to pay a $10,000 fine, DOJ said.
Ljiljana Karadzic asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to set aside its order dismissing her suit challenging her designation on the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals List (see 2408070040). Karadzic claimed the D.C. court failed to address her claim that OFAC made an "unreasonable" decision in "declining to remove her from the list" (Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic v. Lisa Palluconi, D.D.C. # 23-01226).
The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Russian national Sergey Ivanov and virtual currency exchange Cryptex, which is operated by Ivanov. The move was announced concurrently with enforcement action from various U.S. and international enforcement agencies, including an indictment unsealed against Ivanov and fellow Russian national Timur Shakhmametov.