Syrian Sanctions Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Office of Foreign Assets Control</SUBAGY> <CFR>31 CFR Part 542</CFR> <SUBJECT>Syrian Sanctions Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Foreign Assets Control, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is adopting a final rule amending the Syrian Sanctions Regulations to, among other things, implement the relevant provisions of a May 1, 2012 Executive order regarding foreign sanctions evaders with respect to Syria and Iran, and certain provisions of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019. In addition to new prohibitions, OFAC is adding several relevant definitions and interpretations and one new general license. OFAC is also incorporating, with amendments, one general license, which has until now appeared only on OFAC's website, and updating six general licenses. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> OFAC: Assistant Director for Licensing, 202-622-2480; Assistant Director for Regulatory Affairs, 202-622-4855; or Assistant Director for Compliance, 202-622-2490. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Availability</HD> This document and additional information concerning OFAC are available on OFAC's website: <E T="03">https://ofac.treasury.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On April 5, 2005, OFAC issued the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 542 (70 FR 17201, April 5, 2005) (the “Regulations”), to implement Executive Order (E.O.) 13338 of May 11, 2004, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Export of Certain Goods to Syria” (69 FR 26751, May 13, 2004), pursuant to authorities delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury in E.O. 13338. The Regulations were initially issued in abbreviated form for the purpose of providing immediate guidance to the public. On May 2, 2014, OFAC reissued the Regulations in their entirety (79 FR 25414, May 2, 2014), and, among other things, implemented E.O. 13399 of April 25, 2006 (“Blocking Property of Additional Persons in Connection With the National Emergency With Respect to Syria”) (71 FR 25059, April 28, 2006), E.O. 13460 of February 13, 2008 (“Blocking Property of Additional Persons in Connection With the National Emergency With Respect to Syria”) (73 FR 8991, February 15, 2008), E.O. 13572 of April 29, 2011 (“Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria”) (76 FR 24787, May 3, 2011), E.O. 13573 of May 18, 2011 (“Blocking Property of Senior Officials of the Government of Syria ”) (76 FR 29143, May 20, 2011), E.O. 13582 of August 17, 2011 (“Blocking Property of the Government of Syria and Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect to Syria”) (76 FR 52209, August 22, 2011), and E.O. 13606 of April 22, 2012 (“Blocking the Property and Suspending Entry Into the United States of Certain Persons With Respect to Grave Human Rights Abuses by the Governments of Iran and Syria via Information Technology”) (77 FR 24571, April 24, 2012). OFAC has amended the Regulations several times, most recently on November 26, 2021 to expand an authorization related to certain activities of nongovernmental organizations in Syria (86 FR 67324, November 26, 2021). In this document, OFAC is further amending the Regulations to implement E.O. 13608 of May 1, 2012, “Prohibiting Certain Transactions With and Suspending Entry Into the United States of Foreign Sanctions Evaders With Respect to Iran and Syria” (77 FR 26409, May 3, 2012), the Syria Human Rights Accountability Act of 2012 (22 U.S.C. 8791 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (SHRAA), the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (22 U.S.C. 9401 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (CAATSA), and the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 (Pub. L. 116-92, Div. F, Title LXXIV, 133 Stat. 2290 (22 U.S.C. 8791 note)) (Caesar Act). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive and Statutory Authorities</HD> On May 11, 2004, the President, invoking the authority of, <E T="03">inter alia,</E> the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (IEEPA) and the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (Pub. L. 108-175, 117 Stat. 2482 (22 U.S.C. 2151 note)), issued E.O. 13338. In E.O. 13338, the President determined that the actions of the Government of Syria in supporting terrorism, continuing its occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq constituted an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and declared a national emergency to deal with that threat. The national emergency declared in E.O. 13338 was subsequently modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps in E.O.s 13399, 13460, 13572, 13573, 13582, 13606, and 13608, which were issued pursuant to, <E T="03">inter alia,</E> IEEPA, and, among other things, blocked the property and interests in property that are or come within the United States or the possession or control of a U.S. person of the Government of Syria as well as of persons determined to meet certain criteria related to Syria, including persons engaged in human rights abuses. In addition, E.O. 13582 imposed new investment, services-related, and petroleum-related prohibitions involving Syria. <E T="03">E.O. 13608.</E> On May 1, 2012, the President, invoking the authority of, <E T="03">inter alia,</E> IEEPA, issued E.O. 13608, in which he found that efforts by foreign persons to engage in activities intended to evade U.S. economic and financial sanctions with respect to Iran and Syria undermine our efforts to address the national emergencies declared in, among others, E.O. 13338, as modified in scope and relied on for additional steps in subsequent Executive orders, and took additional steps pursuant to these national emergencies. Section 1(a) of E.O. 13608 authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to impose the measures described in section 1(b) of E.O. 13608 on a foreign person upon determining that the foreign person: (i) has violated, attempted to violate, conspired to violate, or caused a violation of any license, order, regulation, or prohibition contained in, or issued pursuant to: (A) any Executive order relating to the national emergencies declared in E.O. 12957 of March 15, 1995, or in E.O. 13338 of May 11, 2004, as modified in scope in subsequent Executive orders; or (B) to the extent such conduct relates to property and interests in property of any person subject to United States sanctions concerning Iran or Syria, E.O. 13382 of June 28, 2005, any Executive order subsequent to E.O. 13382 of June 28, 2005, that relates to the national emergency declared in E.O. 12938 of November 14, 1994, or any Executive order relating to the national emergency declared in E.O. 13224 of September 23, 2001; (ii) has facilitated deceptive transactions for or on behalf of any person subject to United States sanctions concerning Iran or Syria; or (iii) is owned or controlled by, or is acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person determined to meet the criteria set forth in section 1(a) of E.O. 13608. Section 1(b) of E.O. 13608 describes the measures that the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, may impose on foreign persons determined to meet the criteria of section 1(a) of E.O. 13608. The measures that the Secretary of the Treasury may impose with respect to such foreign persons include prohibiting all transactions or dealings, whether direct or indirect, involving such person, including any exporting, reexporting, importing, selling, purchasing, transporting, swapping, brokering, approving, financing, facilitating, or guaranteeing, in or related to (i) any goods, services, or technology in or intended for the United States, or (ii) any goods, services, or technology provided by or to United States persons, wherever located. In section 2 of E.O. 13608, the President determined that the making of donations of the type of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)), by, to, or for the benefit of any person subject to the measures described in section 1 of E.O. 13608, would seriously impair the President's ability to deal with the national emergency declared in E.O. The President therefore prohibited the donation of such items except to the extent provided by statutes, or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to E.O. 13608. Section 3 of E.O. 13608 provides that the prohibitions in section 1 of E.O. 13608 include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person subject to the measures described in E.O. 13608, and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. Section 5 of E.O. 13608 prohibits any transaction by a U.S. person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in E.O. 13608, as well as any conspiracy formed to violate such prohibitions. Section 6 of E.O. 13608 provides that nothing in section 1 of E.O. 13608 shall prohibit transactions for the conduct of the official business of the United States governme ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 110k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━