The Bureau of Industry and Security will add eight companies in China, Germany, Pakistan and Turkey to its Unverified List, it said in a final rule released Oct. 15 and effective Oct. 16. It will also remove one company in China and one in Saudi Arabia. All export license exceptions involving the parties added to the list will be suspended, and exporters must file certain Electronic Export Information and obtain a statement from any party listed on the UVL before proceeding with certain exports.

A Dutch court sentenced an unnamed Soviet Union-born defendant to two years and eight months in prison last week for exporting more than 460 sanctioned aircraft parts to three Russian companies, the London office of Duane Morris said.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned three people and a “sham charity” that it said are international financial supporters of the terror group Hamas. It also designated a “longstanding” Hamas supporter and nine of his businesses for their ties to the group. OFAC said they each “play critical roles in external fundraising” for Hamas, often by disguising their support as charity.

The U.S. is increasingly expecting companies to monitor government guidance as well as export violations committed by others, and to use those cases as “lessons learned” to improve their own compliance programs, lawyers said this week.

As EU member states prepare to vote this week on new tariffs for Chinese electric vehicles, a German trade official and auto industry representative said they believe the EU and China can still reach a “political” agreement to work through their issues and avoid the punitive duties, which they say would harm EU consumers and European car manufacturers that have factories in China.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned more than a dozen companies, ships and Luay al-Mallah, brother of sanctioned “shipping Syrian magnate” Abdul Jalil Mallah, for helping to move Iranian crude oil and liquid petroleum gas to Syria and East Asia. After his brother was sanctioned, Luay al-Mallah helped run his family’s shipping business, OFAC said, which assists the shipping network run by Sa’id al-Jamal, an Iran-backed financial facilitator for the Yemen-based Houthis (see 2408150008).

After initially facing scrutiny for helping to facilitate Russia-related transactions, Cypriot banks have made significant progress in improving their compliance programs in recent months and are now adhering to all U.S. sanctions rules, the country’s top banking industry officials said this week. They also said they face hurdles implementing some of the sanctions, including potential legal challenges from customers.

Defense firm RTX Corp. will pay $200 million to settle alleged violations of U.S. defense export controls, the largest standalone export penalty ever issued by the State Department. RTX voluntarily disclosed the 750 violations, the agency said in a charging letter, most of which involved “historical” issues by an aerospace firm acquired by RTX in 2018.

The U.S. issued nearly 400 new financial blocking sanctions last week against people and companies in Russia and across Asia, Europe and the Middle East for aiding Russia’s war effort against Ukraine. The designations, issued by the Treasury and State departments, target “numerous” Russia-related procurement and sanctions evasion networks along with businesses involved in the Russian energy and mining industries, supporting the country’s military industrial base, connected to Russian state-owned entities, helping to forcibly re-educate Ukrainian children and more.

Nearly a quarter of the 123 new entries the Bureau of Industry and Security will add to its Entity List this week are Chinese suppliers that the agency named in private red-flag letters to U.S. companies earlier this year.