OFAC

The Trump administration will designate Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs as Foreign Terrorist Organizations effective this June, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Thursday. 

The Trump administration has re-added a United Nations human rights official to the U.S. sanctions blacklist just one week after quietly removing her, and less than two weeks after a federal judge ruled the original designation unconstitutional.

Russian airlines have largely defied Western sanctions aimed at grounding their fleets by building a shadow supply chain for Boeing and Airbus spare parts routed through India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Kazakhstan.

OFAC designated more than a dozen individuals and entities linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, targeting two separate networks accused of fentanyl trafficking and money laundering, including one that allegedly converted bulk U.S. drug cash into cryptocurrency for transfer to cartel leadership in Mexico.

Russian intelligence-linked hackers who penetrated the U.S. Treasury Department in the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattack gained the ability to access email accounts across the entire agency, including staff working on sanctions and financial-crime investigations.

Britain issued a new sanctions waiver on Tuesday allowing the import of certain diesel and jet fuel processed in third countries from Russian-origin oil, even as the United States separately tightened sanctions on networks it accused of supporting Hamas and helping Iran move oil and petrochemical revenue.

Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has moved billions of dollars across two blockchains whose founders are among the most prominent backers of a digital currency venture co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his family.

Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises Ltd. has agreed to pay $275 million to settle U.S. allegations that it imported Iranian liquefied petroleum gas through a Dubai-based middleman while routing dollar payments through American banks, OFAC disclosed on Monday.

Erebor Bank, a startup backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has pitched senior Venezuelan officials on restoring the sanctioned country’s access to the U.S. financial system.

Monaco’s financial markets watchdog has fined UBS €6 million for “numerous serious breaches” in anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing controls.