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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

FinCEN, Commerce urge monitoring of attempts to evade Russian export controls

Financial Crimes Of Interest to Non-US Persons FinCEN Department of Commerce Russia Ukraine Ukraine Invasion Customer Due Diligence

Financial Crimes

On May 19, FinCEN and the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a supplemental joint alert urging continued vigilance for potential Russian export control evasion attempts. The alert reinforces ongoing initiatives to further constrain and prevent Russia from accessing critical technology and goods to support its war-making efforts against Ukraine. It follows a joint alert issued last June which urged financial institutions to take a “risk-based approach” for identifying potentially suspicious activity, such as end-use certificates, export documents, or letters of credit-based trade financing. (Covered by InfoBytes here.) The supplemental alert provides information on new export control restrictions implemented since the last joint alert was issued, including evasion typologies, new high priority Harmonized System codes to inform U.S. financial institutions’ customer due diligence, and additional transactional and behavioral red flags to help identify suspicious transactions relating to possible export control evasion.