In the first edition of Castellum.AI’s Export Control Tracker, we provided a breakdown of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) four lists: Denied Persons, Entity, Military End User, and Unverified. Over the past month, BIS designated seven individuals and delisted three under its Denied Persons list—with all other BIS lists remaining untouched.

Rashid Albuni, Connor Hayden Kraegel, and Marc Knapp were all delisted from BIS’s Denied Persons List for having exported or attempted to export various defense articles without proper licenses. Albuni, who was designated in 2015, was charged with exporting advanced computer software and equipment to Syria for use in monitoring and controlling web traffic by the Assad regime. Kraegel, who was designated in 2011, was charged with attempting to export AN/AVS-6 night vision goggles without first obtaining a proper license from the Department of State. And Knapp, who was also designated in 2011, was charged with trying to supply the Iranian government with an F-5B Tiger II fighter jet—an obvious violation of OFAC sanctions and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. 

The delistings of both Kraegel and Knapp came after BIS revoked export privileges for the two for a period of ten years following their respective convictions. Both, however, remain listed on the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) Statutory Debarment list.

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DDTC Lists

The DDTC runs two main lists: Statutory Debarment and Administrative Debarment. While a designation on either list will result in an individual being prohibited from participating directly or indirectly in any activities that are subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), there are substantial legal differences between the two lists. For example, a designation under the Statutory Debarment is made “solely upon the outcome of a criminal proceeding,” whereas the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs may debar and prohibit any individual under DDTC’s Administrative Debarment for any of the reasons outlined in the ITAR.

Recent BIS Designations

Apart from its three delistings, the BIS also added seven individuals to its Denied Persons list, including: 

• Luis Lopez:

  • Lopez was sentenced to 37 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Mexico five AK-47 semi-automatic rifles. 

• Akeem Shonari Awer: 

  • Awer was sentenced to 46 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Barbados firearms and ammunition. 

• Samy Jecrois:

  • Jercois was sentenced to five months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Haiti a firearm. 

• Anastacio San Miguel-Padron: 

  • Miguel-Padron was sentenced to 30 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Mexico approximately 850 rounds of .38 super caliber ammunition, 200 rounds of .40 caliber ammunition, 50 rounds of 9mm caliber ammunition and one 7.62 x 39 mm drum magazine.

• Rrok Martin Camaj: 

  • Camaj was sentenced to 42 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Australia pistol frames/receivers, magazines, pistols kits, and other firearm parts.

• Tengiz Sydykov:

  • Sydykov was sentenced to 36 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Chechnya 7 Assembled firearms, 130 fully assembled lower receivers, 266 firearm slides, 158 firearm barrels, 996 firearm magazines, 10 stocks, 133 firearm frames and 453 functional firearms including springs and firing pins.

• Eli Ramirez-Rios:

  • Ramirez-Rios was sentenced to 28 months in prison for knowingly exporting or attempting to export to Mexico an AR-10 rifle with an obliterated serial number.

On The Radar

While BIS’ Denied Persons list saw the most activity over the past month, that trend may soon change following this week’s inaugural Trade and Technology Council summit between the United States and European Union—where officials from both governments met to discuss stronger alignment on a range of issues, including restrictions on exports of sensitive technologies to Chinese companies. 

Following the meeting, a joint statement was released that outlined the next steps in export restrictions to ensure compliance with international obligations and commitments. Specifically, the statement announced the creation of a Export Controls working group that would “engage in technical consultations on legislative and regulatory developments and exchange information on risk assessments and licensing good practices, as well as on compliance and enforcement approaches, promote convergent control approaches on sensitive dual-use technologies, and perform joint industry outreach on dual-use export controls.” 

Stay tuned to this tracker for key insights as the U.S. and EU continue to align closer on export controls surrounding critical technologies.

Methdology

Castellum.AI obtains global sanctions information from primary sources, and then proceeds to standardize, clean and enrich the data, extracting key information like IDs and addresses from text blobs. Castellum.AI enriches as many as fifteen separate items per entry. This analysis is based on the enriched primary source data that populates our database. The database consists of over 900 watchlists, covering over 200 countries and six different categories (sanctions, export control, law enforcement most wanted, contract debarment, politically exposed persons, regulatory enforcement, and elevated risk). Castellum.AI checks for watchlist updates every five minutes directly from issuing authorities.

Castellum.AI shows the physical location of a designee, as provided by the US government. This information should be examined within the context of the entity’s legal registration within a respective country, which sometimes may actually be a branch of a multinational corporation that is headquartered elsewhere. For example, a Costa Rica listing is not necessarily that of a Costa Rican company, instead it is the local branch of Huawei - a multinational Chinese corporation. Additionally, a small number of entries have addresses that cannot be with high confidence assigned to a specific country, and as such are left blank.  For reasons both geographic and political, all entries related to Hong Kong have been consolidated into China. Northern Mali has been recategorized as Mali due to the mapping provider not having an option for Northern Mali. State Department DDTC is not mapped because State Department DDTC lists do not have any location information.

What Are Export Controls

Export controls are laws that regulate and restrict the release of critical technologies, information, and services to foreign nationals. Over 50 countries globally, from Argentina to Ukraine, have sophisticated export control regimes that focus on goods, technologies and locations. For example, carbon fiber from the United Kingdom cannot be exported to North Korea. But only the US and Japan have export watchlists that name individuals and entities, in addition to goods. Japan’s export control list, however, is very much driven by US listings, with over 65% overlap with US sanctions and export control lists; it also changes infrequently. For this reason, our export control tracker will initially focus only on US export control lists. Our goal is not just to analyze ongoing actions, but to measure and predict their impact. Each edition focuses on the previous month.

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