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OFAC Focusing on High-Dollar Violations Outside of Cuba: GAO
By Brian Monroe
printThe U.S. Treasury Department is focusing less on punishing individuals who travel to Cuba and more on egregious, high-dollar violations, according to a government report. The shift in how the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) enforces blacklists comes as the agency has allocated more resources toward enforcing prohibitions tied to Iran and North Korea, according to a 50-page report published on Oct. 26 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Since 2006, the agency has "consciously" shifted away from collecting relatively low fines related to minor Cuban sanctions infractions, levying 46 such penalties in 2008 compared to 498 in...
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