BIS Makes Further Changes to Administrative Enforcement, But Questions Remain

January 25, 2024

On January 16, 2024, the Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a memorandum, announcing that:

parties disclosing minor or technical violations that occurred close in time can submit a single Voluntary Self-Disclosure (VSD) on a quarterly basis, which may include an abbreviated narrative account of the suspected violations; and

parties sending formal requests to BIS’s Office of Exporter Services to engage in otherwise prohibited activities with respect to items involved in violations of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) should also send courtesy copies to the Office of Export Enforcement (OEE), which will help expedite BIS’s processing of such requests.

The memorandum builds upon previous changes to BIS’s administrative enforcement program, which were announced in memoranda dated June 30, 2022 and April 18, 2023. These changes are intended to help OEE fast-track its review of “minor” or “technical” VSDs and to encourage additional disclosures of potentially significant violations of the EAR, but do not apply to VSDs relating to Part 760 of the EAR (antiboycott and restrictive trade practices). For a detailed analysis of the previous memoranda, see our blog posts from July 6, 2022 and April 26, 2023.