Sanctions

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Cuban military-controlled conglomerate, one of its top executives, and a Cuban nickel-mining joint venture, in the first round of designations under a new executive order targeting the island-nation. 

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday imposed sanctions on Iraq’s deputy oil minister, three senior leaders of Iran-aligned militias, and four Iraqi companies, accusing them of diverting Iraqi oil to benefit Iran’s government and its proxy forces.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has removed Singapore from its enhanced follow-up list but the city-state’s beneficial-ownership safeguards, money-laundering prosecutions, and proliferation-financing controls are still falling short of the risks it faces as one of the world’s largest financial centers.

China’s top financial regulator has quietly told the country’s largest banks to suspend new loans to five Chinese refiners recently sanctioned by the United States over their ties to Iranian oil, even as Beijing publicly orders companies to ignore those same U.S. measures.

Small, little-known Chinese companies are openly marketing and shipping engines, batteries, fiber-optic cables, and other dual-use components to Iranian and Russian drone factories despite U.S. sanctions.

The United States is preparing to lift sanctions on Eritrea, according to an internal U.S. government document seen by Reuters, a move analysts told the news agency was driven by the Horn of Africa nation’s strategic position on the Red Sea shipping route.

The United Kingdom on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 35 individuals and entities accused of trafficking vulnerable migrants to fight on Russia’s front line in Ukraine and of supplying components to the Kremlin’s drone manufacturing operations, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.

The United States and its Gulf allies have circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would threaten Iran with sanctions or other measures unless it halts attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and stops imposing “illegal tolls.”

China has for the first time invoked a law targeting companies that comply with foreign sanctions Beijing rejects, escalating its pushback against U.S. blacklisting of several oil refineries over purchases of Iranian crude.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order authorizing penalties against foreign banks and other companies anywhere in the world that do business with the Cuban government.