Houston residents Muzzamil Zaidi and Asim Mujtaba Naqvi pleaded guilty last week for their role in a scheme to send money to Iran without permission from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, DOJ announced.
Trade lawyers said that recent legislation expanding the statute of limitations on sanctions violations from five to 10 years comes with clear expectations: costlier and longer sanctions investigations.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged four Iranian nationals -- Hossein Harooni, Reza Kazemifar, Komeil Baradaran Salmani and Alireza Shafie Nasab -- for allegedly conducting cyber intrusions on U.S. government and private entities, including the Treasury and State departments, defense contractors and two New York-based companies, DOJ announced.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on April 19 partially dismissed a lawsuit from sanctioned individuals Mir Rahman Rahmani and Hafi Ajmal Rahmani and over two dozen of their companies challenging their sanctions listing for their alleged role in a corruption scheme that swiped millions of dollars from U.S. contracts in Afghanistan (Mir Rahman Rahmani v. Janet Yellen, D.D.C. # 24-00285).
Two officials of an Iraq-based weapons dealer -- Syrian national Mohamad Deiry and Lebanese national Samer Rayya -- were charged with conspiring to ship munitions from the U.S. to Sudan and Iraq without a license, DOJ announced. An indictment, unsealed April 15, alleged the pair violated the Arms Export Control Act and conspired to commit money laundering to advance the "illicit procurement activities."
Jason Prince, former chief counsel for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, has joined Akin Gump's economic sanctions practice, the law firm announced April 3. Prince was most recently a sanctions and export controls lawyer with Crowell & Moring after leaving OFAC in 2022.
The D.C. U.S. District Court on March 11 dismissed a lawsuit from a senior Democratic Republic of Congo elections official challenging his sanctions designation, saying the listing wasn't "arbitrary or capricious" and that due process laws weren't violated.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on March 12 affirmed a federal D.C. court's dismissal of Venezuelan national Samark Jose Lopez Bello's suit against his designation as a narcotics trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Samark Jose Lopez Bello v. Andrea M. Gacki, D.C. Cir. # 21-01727).
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York last week charged Russian oligarch Andrey Kostin, along with Russian national Vadim Wolfson of Austin, Texas, and U.S. citizen Gannon Bond of Edgewater, New Jersey, with conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions on Russia by providing "funds, goods, and services" to Kostin, a sanctioned party, it said in a news release. (U.S. v. Andrey Kostin, S.D.N.Y. # 24-00091).
Jalal Hajavi of Virginia was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of supervised release after he illegally exported heavy equipment from the U.S. to Iran, DOJ announced this week. Hajavi also misled a U.S. freight forwarder about the “ultimate destination” of the shipment, DOJ said, which caused the forwarder to file false export information to the Commerce Department.