US to 'Aggressively' Enforce US Sanctions Against Shipping Companies, State Department Official Says

The U.S. plans to target and “aggressively” enforce measures against shipping companies across the globe that violate U.S. sanctions, a top State Department official said, according to a Nov. 6 Reuters report. David Peyman, deputy assistant secretary of state for counter threat finance and sanctions, told reporters in London that ships are being used as a “key artery to evade sanctions,” according to Reuters. “If behavior doesn’t change, notwithstanding our very frank conversations and clear messages, then we do look toward fully and aggressively and consistently enforcing U.S. sanctions across the board as a means to change behavior of bad actors,” he said.

Peyman said due diligence may be costly and companies may not “see value added” for complying with U.S. sanctions, but he added that companies “will see value added when there are hard costs to bear, including their business potentially going out of business because of a designation or enforcement action.”

The comments came about a month after the U.S. sanctioned two Cosco subsidiaries (see 1909250050), which caused confusion in the tanker market as oil traders scrambled to cancel bookings out of fear of unintentionally violating U.S. sanctions (see 1910030021). Peyman said shipping officials described the sanctions as causing “shock and awe,” according to Reuters.

The U.S. issued general licenses to allow certain transactions with the Cosco entities in October (see 1910240015). The goal was to “help set a good precedent for others in the sector to learn the lessons from a designation like COSCO -- that no company is too big to be sanctioned, no company is in a jurisdiction that is safe from sanctions and what they could be doing to protect themselves,” he said.