On May 3, 2019, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) published A Framework for OFAC Compliance Commitments (the “Compliance Framework”), a guidance document that sets forth OFAC’s views of the essential elements of an effective economic sanctions compliance program (“SCP”).  OFAC…
Continue Reading

The Federal Reserve has requested comment on a highly anticipated notice of proposed rulemaking to amend its regulatory framework for deciding when a company exercises a controlling influence over another company under the Bank Holding Company Act and the Home Owners’ Loan Act.

The proposal is a welcome step in…
Continue Reading

On Tuesday, April 30, our partner Margaret E. Tahyar will testify before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs at a public hearing regarding “Guidance, Supervisory Expectations, and the Rule of Law: How do the Banking Agencies Regulate and Supervise Institutions?”

Ms. Tahyar’s prepared testimony is available here…
Continue Reading

Momentum is building in Congress for federal privacy legislation and several states have their own privacy laws in the works.  But, as concerns grow that companies are collecting and sharing personal information about U.S. residents without their knowledge and not adequately protecting that data, regulators and plaintiffs aren’t waiting for…
Continue Reading

On April 22, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the waivers issued to China, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey, which allow them to continue to import Iranian oil after the United States fully reinstated secondary sanctions against Iran last fall, will expire on May…
Continue Reading

The U.S. banking agencies have proposed allowing custodial banking organizations to exclude certain central bank deposits from the calculation of total leverage exposure, the denominator of the U.S. Basel III supplementary leverage ratio (SLR).  The proposal implements Section 402 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection…
Continue Reading

In separate statements on April 17, 2019 coinciding with the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton announced several measures intended to increase pressure on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, in response to corruption, human rights abuses, and political…
Continue Reading

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS” or the “Committee”) recently publicly announced that it had imposed a $1 million civil monetary penalty against an undisclosed entity for repeated violations of its 2016 mitigation agreement with CFIUS, including failure to establish requisite security …
Continue Reading

There is now a serious effort underway by the usually divided Congress to find a way for the growing cannabis sector to enter the mainstream financial sector.  Our newest visual memorandum updates our earlier briefing on the two legislative vehicles:  the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act (the SAFE Banking …
Continue Reading