Sanctioned Person Asks DC Court to Reinstate Case Against Designation

Ljiljana Karadzic asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to set aside its order dismissing her suit challenging her designation on the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals List (see 2408070040). Karadzic claimed the D.C. court failed to address her claim that OFAC made an "unreasonable" decision in "declining to remove her from the list" (Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic v. Lisa Palluconi, D.D.C. # 23-01226).

The court on Sept. 20 had dismissed the action for being moot. But Karadzic said the issue of mootness "did not affect the issue of whether the decision that the defendants ultimately issued was reasonable."

Karadzic claimed that OFAC unreasonably delayed in ruling on her delisting petition in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. But Judge Tanya Chutkan said the claims are moot since "OFAC has adjudicated her request for removal from the SDN List," meaning any ruling on the APA claims won't affect her rights "nor have a more-than speculative chance of affecting them in the future." The court added that "nothing in the record indicates that requests for removal from the SDN list are 'too short' in duration 'to be fully litigated' prior to 'cessation or expiration.'"

Karadzic, who was sanctioned along with her family in 2008 for allegedly helping her husband, U.N.-convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, argued that her claims aren't moot since she seeks a "declaratory judgment" from the court. The court disagreed, adding that Karadzic isn't even seeking declaratory judgment -- she's only asking the court to set aside OFAC's listing decision.

Karadzic also said her claims are "capable of repetition because her counsel filed a declaration explaining that she would file another request to be removed from the SDN list." Chutkan said, while this "may be true," the court doesn't need to decide whether Karadzic's claims are "capable of repetition" since it finds they don't evade review and thus can't qualify for this exception to mootness.