The Office of Foreign Assets Control will retire its “PIP, DEL, and SDALL.ZIP sanctions list file formats” in August but continue to offer for public download the “XML, CSV, and FF file formats, the ZIP files SDN_XML and SDN_Advanced, and PDF versions” for the agency’s sanctions lists, it said in a notice last week. The notice includes a complete list of files that the agency will retire. OFAC said its Sanctions List Search tool “will not be affected by these changes, and users of the search tool will not experience any loss of service.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week issued a reminder to industry to file annual reports on blocked property by Sept. 30. The notice applies to blocked property held as of June 30.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control denied allegations that it incorrectly sanctioned Iranian car manufacturer Bahman Group, telling a federal court last month that “at all relevant times” the agency acted in accordance with U.S. sanctions authorities. The agency said it sanctioned Bahman Group twice, each time under “independent factual bases,” and said facts supported its “determination” that Bahman Group continued to provide “material assistance” to the sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It also objected to Bahman Group’s claim that the company “successfully” rebutted the “factual bases” on which OFAC added the company to its Specially Designated Nationals List.

A former board member of a Russian state-owned bank asked a federal court to order the U.S. to remove her from a U.S. sanctions list, saying there is “no factual basis” that supports her listing. In a complaint recently filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Elena Titova, a dual Russian and U.K. citizen, said she resigned from her position eight days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year but was still added to the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List even though she hasn’t been designated by any “other nation in the world.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week deleted 15 entries and updated three others on its Specially Designated Nationals List. The deleted entries were sanctioned for counter-narcotics reasons and for ties to Venezuela. The agency didn’t release more information.

The U.S. and U.K. published a joint guidance this week to “provide additional clarity” on what types of humanitarian aid and transactions related to “food security” are authorized under their respective Russian sanctions programs. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.K. Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said humanitarian groups, nongovernmental organizations, financial institutions and others involved in the agricultural or medical supply trade should use the seven-page document as a “guide when engaging in transactions that may be impacted by sanctions.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned four companies and one person connected to the sanctioned Russian military group PMC Wagner (Wagner Group) and its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. The designations target Central African Republic-based Midas Resources SARLU and Diamville SAU, United Arab Emirates-based Industrial Resources General Trading and Russia-based Limited Liability Company DM, which are involved in “illicit gold dealings” to help fund the Wagner Group. OFAC also sanctioned Andrey Nikolayevich Ivanov, a Wagner executive who has worked closely with Prigozhin’s entity, Africa Politology, and senior Malian government officials on weapons deals and other activities in Mali.

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The Office of Foreign Assets Control last week sanctioned two Russian Federal Security Service officers recently indicted by DOJ for assisting the Kremlin’s foreign election interference efforts. The designations target Yegor Sergeyevich Popov and Aleksei Borisovich Sukhodolov.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week published a previously issued general license under its Venezuela Sanctions Regulations. The full text of the license is available in the notice.