Russian national Oleg Patsulya was sentenced April 2 to nearly six years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to ship controlled aviation technology to Russia in violation of U.S. export laws and to launder money in connection with the scheme, DOJ announced.
The Court of International Trade sent back the Commerce Department's use of UN Comtrade data in the benchmark price for plywood and the use of adverse facts available to find that certain input suppliers are government "authorities" in both the 2019 and 2020 reviews of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Issuing a pair of decisions on the reviews on April 3, Judge Timothy Reif said that while Commerce permissibly found that the Chinese government failed to submit adequate information regarding the input suppliers, the agency ultimately didn't give the foreign government proper notice or opportunity to remedy its deficiencies.
The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that a recent CAFC decision, Pirelli Tyre Co. v. U.S., supports the government's position that the U.S. doesn't need to show a link between the "selection of management and the company’s export activities" in finding that a respondent has failed to show a lack of government control. Filing a notice of supplemental authority in a trio of cases, the government said Pirelli also supports its position that "respondents must meet the burden or persuasion to establish independence regardless of any evidentiary presumption" (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #s 23-2163, -2164) (China Manufacturers Alliance v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2391).
The Commerce Department properly found that the provision of mining rights by the Moroccan government didn't confer a benefit to countervailing duty respondent OCP and that the provision of port services was not countervailable, the Court of International Trade held on April 1.
Ken Wainstein, a former U.S. national security prosecutor and intelligence official, has joined Mayer Brown as a lawyer advising on export controls, sanctions, foreign direct investment and other national security enforcement issues. Wainstein was most recently the DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis.
Darshak Dholakia, a former partner at Dechert, has joined McDermott Will as a partner in the regulatory practice group in Washington, D.C., the firm announced. Dholakia's practice centers on economic sanctions, anti-money laundering, anti-corruption laws and export controls, the firm said.
DOJ this week announced charges against two Iranian nationals and one company for illegally sending export-controlled U.S. technology to Iran and for providing "material support" to the country's military.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Commerce Department erred in picking just one mandatory respondent in the 2017 review of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public on April 1. In a monster 117-page decision, Judge Timothy Reif remanded parts of the review, including the agency's decision on remand to stick with just one mandatory respondent.
The U.S. this month arrested and charged a Pakistani-Canadian national with conspiracy to violate U.S. export controls after DOJ said he illegally shipped millions of dollars worth of controlled items to entities in Pakistan, including ones on the Entity List, all while hiding the true end-users from U.S. exporters.