Executive Order Expands US Sanctions Authorities, Treasury Says

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Sept. 10 that “strengthens and expands” the State and Treasury departments' sanctions authorities against terrorists, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a notice. Among several changes, the order allows the U.S. to impose “correspondent account or payable-through account sanctions” on foreign banks that “knowingly conducted or facilitated any significant transaction” for a U.S. sanctioned global terrorist, OFAC said.

The executive order blocks transactions with certain people deemed Specially Designated Global Terrorists, any foreign person determined by the Secretary of State and Treasury to be involved in terrorism or any “leader of an entity ... whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to a determination by the Secretary of State.” The order also gives Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin the power to block or impose “strict conditions” of a correspondent account or payable-through account in the U.S. belonging to “any foreign financial institution.”

OFAC used its “newly enhanced counterterrorism sanctions authorities” to impose sanctions on 21 people and seven entities in “some of the furthest reaching designations of terrorists and their supporters in the past 15 years,” Treasury said in a Sept. 10 press release.

The sanctions designated terrorist leaders and groups associated with Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaida and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods-Force, and includes updates to more than 25 existing designations.

Treasury said the new authorities will allow it to “more efficiently target leaders or officials of terrorists groups” and issue secondary sanctions against foreign banks that have transferred money on their behalf. “This new authority serves to put all foreign financial institutions on notice that enabling terrorists and their financial backers to rely upon the international financial system to facilitate their malign activities will have consequences,” Treasury said.

The sanctions include designations against IRGC-QF official Muhammad Sa’id Izadi, Hamas official Zaher Jabarin, Turkey-based Redin Exchange and Redin Exchange officials Marwan Mahdi Salah Al-Rawi and Ismael Tash. Also sanctioned are Istanbul-based Smart Ithalat Ihracat Dis Ticaret Limited Sirketi, the Saksouk Company for Exchange and Money Transfer, Al Haram Foreign Exchange Co. Ltd., Al-Khalidi Exchange, Al-Hebo Jewelry Company, Muhamad Ali al-Hebo, Mohamad Ameen, Mohamed Ahmed Elsayed Ahmed Ibrahim, Almaida Marani Salvin, Muhammad Ali Sayid Ahmad and others.