Archive for September, 2009

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Dutch Export Defendant Flies to U.S. to Face Charges

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Rob KraaipoelBack in 2007, I discussed in two posts (here and here) a criminal complaint filed against Netherlands-based Aviation Services International, B.V., and its owner Rob Kraaipoel, a citizen and resident of the Netherlands. The criminal complaint accused Kraaipoel and his company of exporting U.S.-origin items from the Netherlands to Iran without required U.S. licenses. Given the absence of any contacts by Aviation Services and Kraaipoel with the United States, I stated that the U.S.-origin of the goods was not a sufficient basis for criminal jurisdiction over the two Dutch entities and that an extradition request might not be viewed favorably by Dutch courts. A temporary denial order was later put in place by the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) against Kraaipoel and his company. That order forbade U.S. entities from exporting any items to Kraaipoel or Aviation Services or participating in any exports to them. And that, I thought, would be the end of the matter.

So I was more than a little surprised to read that Kraaipoel appeared last week before a federal judge here in D.C. entering a plea of guilty, both individually and on behalf of Aviation Services, to charges arising from his exports of U.S.-origin goods from the Netherlands to Iran. Had he foolishly planned a vacation to Disneyland and gotten nabbed at an airport in the United States? Had a Dutch judge actually granted a motion for extradition in this matter? No, according to the government’s motion to quash an arrest warrant issued against Kraaipoel in 2007, Kraaipoel had retained U.S. counsel and had voluntarily agreed to fly to the United States to face the music.

Why on earth would he do that? The plea agreement, after the agreed downward adjustments from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, calls for a penalty of 46 to 57 months in jail. Of course, we can only speculate here, but it seems that several factors might be in play. Even if a Dutch court was unlikely to entertain an extradition motion, law enforcement authorities in other jurisdictions might enforce the warrant at the request of the United States. Think Roman Polanski. This has been done in at least one export case where a U.K. resident was arrested by Polish authorities based on a U.S. arrest warrant. The BIS denial order would also have probably been hurting Kraaipoel’s business, but the last temporary denial order expired in April 2009, and Kraaipoel and his company are not currently on the Denied Parties List. Even if more TDOs are imposed, nothing in a guilty plea would motivate BIS to lift a denial order but rather would serve more as a basis to extend any existing denial order.

Oddly Kraaipoel was allowed to return to the Netherlands after entering his plea and no date for sentencing was set. An AP report quoted Kraaipoel’s attorney as saying that the defendants were hoping for a sentence of probation only in light of anticipated cooperation with prosecutors. The plea agreement indeed provides that Kraaipoel would be released pending sentencing in light of his anticipated cooperation in further investigations. And it further states provides that in the event that Kraaipoel provides “substantial assistance,” the government would move that the defendant be allowed to argue for a sentence with a lesser period of incarceration. The proffer of proof indicates that Kraaipoel was acting in concert with Iranian individuals operating in Cyprus and the U.A.E. Sounds like they might be the next targets of this investigation.

Posted in Criminal Penalties, Iran Sanctions | 1 Comment »

Gone Missing

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

page_not_found

Yesterday the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls issued a notice in the Federal Register seeking public comment on Form DS-4076. This form is the one proposed by DDTC for mandatory filing of Commodity Jurisdiction (“CJ”) requests with the agency via D-Trade, its electronic filing system. The announcement led some to speculate breathlessly that the adoption of the new mandatory CJ form is just around the corner.

Actually, as long as this form has been kicking around at DDTC, the agency has been publishing the same request for comments on the form. Here is an almost identical notice issued in 2005. So I’m not sure much can be inferred from yesterday’s Federal Register notice.

And then there’s this. The form on which DDTC is supposedly seeking comment is not printed with the notice and has been “disappeared” from the DDTC website. The link to the form on the “Future Enhancements” page no longer functions and leads instead to a “page not found” error page. Another link was working yesterday and would bring up the form but today it brings up a “page not found” error page as well. And a Google search of the DDTC site shows that the form isn’t hiding anywhere else on the website. You can, however, view a copy that Google has kept in its cache here.

The form seems unchanged from previous versions of the proposed CJ form. In general, it asks for much more information than is required under the current CJ guidelines. And then, the proposed form still contains a bitter pill for applicants to swallow. It asks whether the item subject to the CJ has ever been exported before. In other words, if you’ve exported something, believing it not to be USML, the result of a CJ request may include a directed disclosure.

UPDATE: Doug Jacobson found on the DDTC site what looks to be a new version of the DS-4076 here. I don’t see any links to this version anywhere on the DDTC site and the only links on the site purporting to go to form DS-4076 remain broken and don’t point towards this revised form of the DS-4076. The filing instructions at the end of this version of the DS-4076 form rather oddly provide for electronic uploading of the form outside the D-Trade system and direct the electronic filer to yet another broken link.

Posted in DDTC | 1 Comment »

The Firefox in the Win House?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

firefox_iranLast week an obviously confused reporter at internetnews.com reported what he thought were the details of a letter from the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) received by Mozilla, the open-source project responsible for Firefox, Thunderbird and other Internet applications, relating to downloads of the program by computer users in Iran. The article seemed to suggest that Mozilla had filed a voluntary disclosure with BIS that it had allowed downloads of its open-source encryption source code by Iranians. The article seemed to suggest further that Mozilla had received a letter from BIS stating that this was not a violation.

But that’s not what happened. BIS released yesterday an Advisory Opinion that, although identifying details have been removed, clearly addresses the situation described in the internetnews.com article. And, significantly, the advisory opinion doesn’t address exports of source code but instead addresses export of compiled source code and, specifically, compiled source code including mass market encryption software. Under section 746.7(a)(1) of the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) exports of compiled mass market encryption software (or any other compiled encryption software) to Iran would require a BIS license. The Advisory Opinion held that as long as the IP address of the party downloading the software in Iran (or other sanctioned country) was logged by Mozilla’s server but not otherwise used by Mozilla (say, for example, to serve to the user a web page in Farsi), the company did not have sufficient knowledge of an export of encryption software to Iran to be liable under the regulations.

Even though I don’t believe that, as a matter of policy, downloads of web browsers with encryption features ought to be subject to export controls, the reasoning of the Advisory Opinion is, to say the least, a bit odd. It seems fairly well-established that knowledge is not a required to establish a violation of the EAR. Specifically, section 764.2(a), which defines violations of the EAR, doesn’t contain a knowledge requirement, nor does General Prohibition No. 1 which would be the predicate to a violation of section 764.2(a). Perhaps this signals a retreat by BIS from its traditional concept of strict liability for violations of the EAR.

Even so, the final sentence of the Advisory Opinion may nullify, as a practical matter, any significance the opinion may have with respect to software downloads in sanctioned countries:

Please note that this advisory opinion is confined to interpretation of the EAR, and does not address the sanctions regulations implemented by the Office of Foreign Assets Control ["OFAC"]

And, as we all know, other major software companies, such as Google and Microsoft, have prohibited downloads in sanctioned countries due to fears of OFAC penalties.

Posted in BIS, Iran Sanctions, OFAC | 5 Comments »

Good News and Bad News

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Andrew Shapiro
ABOVE: Andrew Shapiro

Let’s take the good news first.

It comes from Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary, Political-Military Affairs at State, in his Keynote Address to ComDef 2009, earlier this month:

I am also happy to report that we are making significant strides in the administration of defense trade, which I know has been a focus of our industry partners over the years. In 2006, DDTC adjudicated just over 70,000 cases in the entire year — with an average processing time of 43 days. In the past eight months, DDTC staff have already acted on nearly 60,000 license applications — and the processing time for each now averages just over two weeks. While we are proud of this improvement, it does not mean we will become complacent. I am committed to ensuring that we continue to be as efficient and transparent as possible in reviewing and processing export license applications.

A similar effort is now being made in the review of Commodity Jurisdiction (CJ) requests. One of the first actions of the new Administration was to streamline CJ adjudication procedures. I now meet with my counterparts at DoD, Commerce, and the National Security Council on a weekly basis to review and resolve outstanding CJ cases. DDTC is building on this process by developing new implementation procedures, including the use of new submission criteria and electronic staffing and adjudication processes that should cut determination time in half by the end of the year.

And Shapiro also had interesting things to say about the U.K. and Australia Defense Cooperation Treaties:

Finally, I would like to give you a brief update on the U.S.-UK and U.S.-Australia Defense Cooperation Treaties — a priority for the Obama Administration. These are a critical element of my defense trade agenda. I am fully engaged with key Members and Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff in seeking a way forward and I’m working to address their concerns about implementing legislation, which the Administration believes is unnecessary. As former Senate staffer, I’m particularly appreciative of the important role that the legislative branch plays in our foreign policy, and I will continue to work closely with Committee staff on a way forward on these treaties.

In other words, the Obama administration has pretty much adopted the position of the former Bush administration on the two defense cooperation treaties and will, if necessary, pass its own rules to implement these treaties even if Congress won’t ratify them. Or at least the White House threatening to do that.

Now for the bad news.

Part 129Several reliable sources have contacted this blog and said that they’ve heard someone over at DDTC saying that “for others” in the definition of “broker” found in section 129.2(a) of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”) doesn’t mean what you think it means. Traditionally that phrase has been read by the export bar to mean, in a corporate context, unrelated companies or individuals. Now it appears that DDTC may be saying that “for others” applies to other companies in a corporate group. If a company has a wholly-owned foreign subsidiary that assists it in the sale of a defense article, that would, under this strained reading of the definition, mean that the foreign subsidiary is a broker for the parent company.

The registration issues caused by this reading aren’t so hard to handle, at least as long as the parent company makes sure that its subsidiaries are listed on its registration form or amends the form to include its subsidiaries using the procedures described in section 122.4 of the ITAR. The problem is that some of these newly-discovered “brokering” transactions by subsidiaries for parents might require either prior approval or prior notice if those transactions meet the criteria set forth in sections 129.7 and 129.8.

The brokering amendment was meant to capture exports of defense articles by U.S. individuals and companies that would otherwise escape licensing requirements because the export was being made between two foreign countries. It was not meant to cover exports from the United States assisted by foreign subsidiaries of the exporter. So this position by DDTC represents not only an unprecedented intrusion into intra-corporate dealings and structure but also represents an unwarranted departure from the agency’s statutory authority.

Has anybody else gotten wind of this? If so, please share your experience, if you feel comfortable doing so, in the comments section. No need for you to identify yourself or your company, of course. And please, please don’t reference or name any specific officials at DDTC.

Posted in DDTC, Part 129 | 1 Comment »

German Court Orders Retrial in Iran Export Case

Monday, September 21st, 2009

iran_bombThe Institute for Science and International Security recently released an interesting report on Germany’s criminal prosecution of Vanaki Mohsen, who was accused of exporting various dual use items to Iran in violation of Germany’s War Weapons Control Act. The prosecution arose from Vanaki’s brokering of the export of certain high-speed cameras that could be used in the development and testing of nuclear weapons. Vanaki brokered this sale from a Russian company to an Iranian front company in the U.A.E.

Although the ISIS report isn’t clear on this, it appears that Vanaki must have been charged under section 19 of the German law. Although the law prohibits exporting or brokering of “war weapons,” it is likely that the high-speed cameras were considered a dual-use item rather than a war weapon. In that case, section 19 would prohibit the brokering of the item to Iran if, and only if, Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

This lead to an unusual step by Vanaki’s defense which introduced the United States’ 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (“NIE”) on Iran which, the defense claimed, concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 and had not resumed it by 2007 when the high-speed cameras at issue were sold to Iran. The German trial court agreed and acquitted the defendant.

The prosecution appealed, and the appeals court sent the case back to the trial court for another trial. In reaching its decision, the appeals court pointed out that the trial court put too much reliance on the 2007 NIE. The NIE’s conclusion that it was “moderately confident” that Tehran had not resumed its nuclear weapons program was far from proof that it had, in fact, not resumed that program. The appeals court also relied on a supplemental report from the Bundesnachrichtendienst (“BND”), Germany’s foreign intelligence service, which discussed the development by Iran of a missile launcher as well as similarities in procurement practices by Iran and countries known to have nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea. Based on this report, the appeals court found that it was now likely that Vanaki would be convicted on a retrial and sent the case back to the trial court.

Two things bear noting here. First, Germany’s export laws in this case, and in other cases that involve dual-use items, impose an intolerably heavy burden of proof in export prosecutions. In effect, the state has to prove that the country in question has a nuclear program, an element of proof that would be difficult and almost necessarily speculative in the case of many countries which are believed to be developing nuclear weapons but have not yet admitted that fact. Second, it appears that the BND assessment must provide some fairly certain intelligence demonstrating the existence and scope of Iran’s nuclear program. This may explain why Germany, unlike some other EU countries, has recently seemed more interested in restricting certain exports to Iran.

Posted in Criminal Penalties, EU, Nonproliferation | No Comments »

BIS Fines U.S. Firm For Having Foreign Subsidiaries

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Thermon ManufacturingTwo weeks ago, we reported on a $14,613.24 fine imposed by the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) on Thermon Manufacturing after Thermon voluntarily disclosed to the agency that it had shipped heat-tracing equipment to Sudan in violation of the U.S. embargo on that country. That was not the end of the story, however, but rather merely the foreword to a more disturbing story.

Yesterday, BIS posted a press release on its website describing the rest of the tale. According to that press release, BIS fined five foreign subsidiaries of Thermon $176,000 because those subsidiaries had also exported heat-tracing equipment to “Iran, Syria, Libya and listed entities in India.” This violations had also been voluntarily disclosed by the parent company in Texas.

What makes this fine problematic is the following statement in the press release:

The Thermon subsidiaries did not inform Thermon Manufacturing of the ultimate destinations for the items and had been informed by Thermon Manufacturing in February 2005 that “products manufactured by Thermon US may not be sold to countries on the US trade sanctions list,” including specifically Iran, Syria and Libya. BIS alleged that the affiliates acted with knowledge of those violations involving shipments to sanctioned countries that occurred after this warning.

First, one has to wonder what else Thermon was supposed to do. Thermon had instructed its subsidiaries not to violate U.S. export laws, and specifically that they could not sell equipment to countries subject to U.S. economic sanctions. It also appears from the press release that the subsidiaries pulled the wool over the parent company’s eyes and placed orders for the equipment at issue without telling the U.S. parent that the equipment was destined for sanctioned countries. And although the fines were imposed on the subsidiaries rather than the parent, this is just an accounting nicety. Thermon ultimately pays this fine.

In essence, this fine is nothing more than a penalty imposed on U.S. companies for having foreign subsidiaries unless and until BIS provides industry some guidance as to how to avoid such fines other than simply shutting down foreign subsidiaries. Was the problem here that the instructions by the parent to the subsidiaries about exports to sanctioned countries weren’t frequent enough? Or was it that the parent didn’t threaten to guillotine any employees of the foreign subsidiaries who violated these rules? Perhaps BIS thought that these instructions should have been bilingual. Your guess is as good as mine at this point.

Second, and this is an even bigger irony of the case, the parent’s instructions to the subsidiaries appear to have made things worse for the parent. It was because of those instruction that BIS elevated the penalty through charging that these were “acting with knowledge” violations under section 764.2(e) of the Export Administration Regulations. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, as they say.

The charging documents haven’t been released by BIS yet. Perhaps they will shed more light on this sorry situation.

Posted in BIS | 2 Comments »

Malaysia Fast Becoming a Diversion Destination for Exports to Iran

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

flagsAn excellent article that appeared today on the Bloomberg website indicates that Malaysia may be nudging the U.A.E. out of the position as top transhipment destination for items headed from the U.S. to Iran. According to that article, increasing crackdowns by the U.A.E. on exports to its neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz has caused Iran to increase its usage of middlemen and front companies in Malaysia to source equipment that Iran seeks to acquire from the United States.

One case in particular that is highlighted by the article involves the criminal prosecution of Majid Kavakand, an Iranian citizen who was provisionally arrested in France on March 6, 2009, where he is awaiting a determination by French courts on the United States’ request for extradition. The criminal complaint filed in the case provides interesting details on Kakavand’s modus operandi. Typically Kakavand would receive requests from Iran and then would use his company in Malaysia, Evertop Services, to solicit over the Internet small businesses in the U.S. to ship the items to Evertop, at which point the goods would be shipped to Iran.

Although the complaint doesn’t identify the U.S. companies in question, it provides enough detail (product model numbers, company addresses, etc.) that it was a simple matter for me to ascertain the identity of the companies. I won’t specifically name them here, but suffice it to say that each of the companies was a small business with a website that advertised the companies’ willingness to export items to overseas customers. In other words, they all were companies that Kakavand might suspect lacked the sophistication or motivation to make much inquiry into Kakavand’s purchase orders.

And, inf fact, not one of the companies involved in the charges filed against Kakavand appeared to perform any due diligence on Evertop or Mr. Kakavand other than to ask for confirmation that the end-user was Evertop in Malaysia. And none seemed to have been bothered by a substantial, no, gigantic red flag. In each case, Kakavand asked that the items be shipped to Evertop in care of “K” Line Logistics, it’s freight forwarder in Malaysia. If Evertop was the end user, why on earth would it want the goods sent to a freight forwarder in Malaysia? Needless to say, “K” Line Logistics appeared to have had instructions to ship the goods immediately upon receipt to Tehran.

Another interesting detail from the Kakavand case is that the prosecution made a large part of its case from emails sent by Kakavand from his Yahoo! mail account. Yahoo! coughed up all the emails after it was served a search warrant. Similarly, as Sharon Weinberger recently noted, the case made against Monsieur Monsieur was aided by a search warrant served by the government on Google to obtain emails sent by M. Monsieur through his gmail account. It’s hard to imagine why people busy trying to violate U.S. export laws would use a U.S.-based email provider, but there you have it. It’s not much different, I suppose, from a bank robber writing his demand note on the back of one of his own personal checks.

Posted in Criminal Penalties, Iran Sanctions | No Comments »

New BIS Rules Stretch U.S. Jurisdiction To The Breaking Point

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Do What I Say!In an ambitious display of extraterritorial overreach, the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) last week amended the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) to expand the scope of the regulations to cover in-country transfers to companies and individuals on the agency’s Entity List.

Most readers should be familiar with that list, but for those that may not be, the Entity List is a list of several hundred, well, entities in foreign countries. The companies and individuals have been placed on the list because of the U.S. government’s concern about their activities in nuclear proliferation, missile technology, chemical warfare agent development or other areas of foreign policy concern. The result of an Entity List designation is to require licenses for the export or re-export of specified items to the designated entity. In most cases the list indicates that the items which require licensing are “all items subject to the EAR,” which is BIS-ese for items with specified amounts of U.S. content. These need not be sensitive dual-use items listed on the Commerce Control List but include, for example, a U.S. flag (assuming it wasn’t made in China). And in most cases the Entity List indicates that there is a presumption of denial for license requests.

Under the new rules, a license would be required not only for exports of an item from the United States to the designated “entity” or exports of the item from a foreign country to the entity (“re-exports”) but also for in-country transfers to the designated entity. To understand the impact of the amendment, consider this example. The first entity on the list is one Ali Bakshien, a resident of Toronto, Canada. Ali’s mother goes to the American Apparel Store on College Street in Toronto and buys some trendy, and American-made, shirts, underwear and socks as a birthday gift for Ali. Unless she asks BIS for permission to give these shirts, socks and briefs to Ali, she becomes subject to a civil penalty of $250,000 under U.S. law when gives Ali his birthday present. And, if she knew that Ali was on the Entity List and knew that prohibited the unlicensed birthday present to Ali, did she commit a felony in giving him the items?

So what is BIS going to do? Send Ali’s mother a charging letter? If BIS thinks Ali’s mom knew about the Entity List designation and the in-country transfer restrictions, is it going to have the Department of Justice request extradition? (You don’t have to have a very vivid imagination to figure out what Canada’s likely response would be to an extradition petition in this situation, particularly if you picture a pounding hammer and a box of sand.) Will they arrest her at JFK if she takes a trip to catch a few Broadway shows?

Needless to say, I don’t believe the U.S. has jurisdiction, either under international or U.S. law, over this conduct simply because it involved a t-shirt made in LA shipped by the manufacturer to Canada where it was then bought and given to another Canadian. But U.S. export agencies — DDTC included — have continued to insist that jurisdiction can be hung on such a weak thread. And this recent amendment of the entity list rules continues down this misguided path.

Posted in BIS | 10 Comments »

New Cuba Rules Expand Exports

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Visit CubaIn my last post on the new Cuba regulations, I hadn’t yet seen the regulations published by the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) in the Federal Register on September 8 but had only seen press reports about their supposed contents. Both BIS and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) issued regulations to implement the White House’s relaxation of parts of the embargo as announced in April of this year. Both agencies needed to issue regulations because OFAC regulates payments and provision of services to Cuba while BIS regulates exports of goods to Cuba.

The new BIS regulations amend existing License Exception GFT which covers gift parcels and create a new license exception CCD which covers exports of certain consumer communications devices to Cuba. Although both license exceptions expand unlicensed exports to Cuba, they differ in significant ways.

Prior to the amendments, license exception GFT permitted individuals to send gift packages to members of their immediate family (excluding designated officials of the Cuban government and the Communist Party) of food, medicine, medical devices, and certain mobile phones. Packages were limited in value to $400 for all items other than food As amended, license exception GFT now covers gift parcels with a value up to $800 for all items other than food. The recipients of these packages no longer need to be immediate family members of the sender but can be anyone in Cuba (other than Cuban government and party officials). And the items in the package can now include clothing, personal hygiene items, veterinary items, fishing equipment and soap-making equipment. Significantly the packages can now also include items normally sent as gifts between individuals.

The new license exception CCD covers consumer communication devices and specifically lists, among other things, computers and peripherals, mobile phones, storage media, audio and video players and recorders, digital cameras and batteries and chargers for these devices. Although there are some overlaps between license exceptions GFT and CCD, there are some significant differences. For example, in terms of overlap, many of the items listed as eligible for exception CCD might also qualify under GFT as items normally sent as gifts between individuals.

Even if a computer might be exchanged as a gift, three computers would not normally be such a gift, meaning that multiple computers would not be eligble under exception GFT but would be eligible under exception CCD. Additionally, license exception CCD can cover exports from groups and companies, whereas exception GFT only covers exports by individuals. Finally, there is no limitation on the value of items sent under exception CCD. Nor is there a frequency limitation under exception CCD as opposed to the one parcel per month limitation under exception GFT. In essence, the only significant restriction under exception CCD, at least for the specific consumer communications devices enumerated, is that they can’t be sent to Cuban government or Communist Party officials.

Posted in Cuba Sanctions | 2 Comments »

New Cuba Rules Out Today, er, Tomorrow, er, Really Soon (Maybe)

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Visit CubaAn article published Wednesday in the Miami Herald breathlessly announced that the reporter had been told that the new OFAC and BIS rules implementing the changes to the Cuba embargo announced by the administration in April would appear in Thursday’s Federal Register. But that didn’t happen. Late on Thursday afternoon, OFAC’s new regulations appeared at the Federal Register Public Inspection Desk with an indication that they would be published next Tuesday, September 8, but were effective as of September 3 when they were made available to the Public Inspection Desk.

The BIS’s implementing regulations, however, are still missing in action, notwithstanding the newspaper article’s indication that they too would be published on Thursday. And there is no indication at the Public Inspection desk of any future publication date for the BIS’s piece of this action.

The OFAC regulations pretty much track what was promised in the April announcement with some interesting additions. First, the definition of family for purposes of travel to Cuba now includes “persons who share a common dwelling as a family with a licensed family traveler,” which apparently means that common-law spouses and, perhaps, domestic partners are authorized to travel to Cuba with persons who have close relatives in Cuba.

Second, although the new regulations, as promised, increase the amount that can be spent during family visits to Cuba from $50 per day to the maximum per diem rate payed for government travel to Cuba, the comments to the new regulations state that no imports into the United States of Cuban merchandise by returning travelers is allowed. So, for those of you hoping that the war on Cuban cigars might be coming to an end in the foreseeable future, dream on. (By the way, I think that the maximum per diem for Cuba is $180 per day, but I’ll be darned if I can verify that from the link given by OFAC for computing that rate.)

The BIS regulations, when they appear, will deal with authorized exports to Cuba, including increasing the baggage weight limitation for travelers to Cuba. The article in the Herald suggests that the BIS regulations might also be somewhat broader than the description of changes in the April announcement:

Among the changes that take effect Thursday afternoon:

• The items people can send to Cuba now include things like digital cameras, personal computers, seeds, fishing equipment, TVs and radios. (Before, packages were limited to food and medicine.)

• The limit on the value of those packages was doubled to $800.

The April announcement indicated that gift parcels could contain “clothing, personal hygiene items, seeds, veterinary medicines and supplies, fishing equipment and supplies, and soap-making equipment” as well as reasonable quantities of items “normally exchanged as gifts by individuals.” No explicit mention was made of several of the items listed in the news report, namely digital cameras, personal computers, televisions and radios. Perhaps these items are going to added because they aren’t clearly things normally exchanged as gifts and because these items are generally consistent with the goal of the rules to increase and enhance communications by Cubans among themselves and with the outside world.

NOTE:Export Law Blog is taking brief vacation for the Labor Day weekend, so the next new post won’t appear until the end of next week. Comments will be checked periodically to release them from the moderation queue. Have a pleasant and safe holiday, everyone, and we’ll see you all again next week.

Posted in Cuba Sanctions | 6 Comments »

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