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OFAC Shifting Focus to Bigger Cases, Penalties as Agency Acclimates to New Powers
By Brian Monroe
printThe U.S. Treasury Department is reorganizing its economic sanctions enforcement efforts to focus more on egregious violations that are subject to millions of dollars in penalties granted under a 2007 law. The dollar amount of fines levied this year by the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), at $10.6 million, is already three times more than the $3.5 million in penalties issued in all of 2008. But while penalty amounts have increased, the number of fines in the first seven months of 2009 fell by more than two-thirds, to 21, from the over 70 issued during the same period...
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