The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) adopted a final rule to extend its export restrictions across more entities and individuals designated under certain sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The rule, published in the Federal Register and effective as of Thursday, allows for the BIS’s Export Administration Regulations (EAR) controls to “act as a backstop for activities over which OFAC does not exercise jurisdiction, including deemed exports and deemed reexports, and for reexports and transfers (in-country) that would otherwise not involve U.S. persons,” the agency said.
Its scope will cover 14 OFAC sanctions programs related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, foreign and global terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and foreign narcotics and kingpins. Entities and individuals designated under the programs will automatically be subject to more stringent export, reexport, and transfer (in-country) controls under the EAR.
The BIS said the rule will allow the agency to better complement OFAC’s blocking measures targeting financial dealings.
“Export controls and financial sanctions have long been complementary, and [this] rule will serve as a force multiplier in their overall effectiveness,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea Rozman Kendler in a press release.
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