US Officially Removes Belaruskali From Sanctions Lists

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has officially lifted all sanctions on BPC and Belaruskali and issued a general license allowing transactions with Belinvestbank.

General License No. 14 authorizes operations with JSC “Belinvestbank” (Belarusian Bank for Development and Reconstruction) and a number of affiliated entities, OFAC said in a press release.

The license permits transactions with JSC “Belarusian Bank for Development and Reconstruction ‘Belinvestbank,’” Belinvest-Engineering LLC, Belbusinesslizing CJSC, and entities in which one or more of these organizations directly or indirectly own a 50% or greater stake.

The license does not authorize:

• unblocking of any property blocked under any part of Chapter V of 31 CFR (the US Code of Federal Regulations);
• any transactions otherwise prohibited under the Belarus Sanctions Regulations (BSR), including dealings with property or interests in property of any blocked person, except for those specified in paragraph (a) of the general license, unless separately authorized.

In addition, in consultation with the US State Department, OFAC determined that “circumstances no longer require the application of restrictions imposed on the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Belarus and the Development Bank of the Republic of Belarus under Directive 1 pursuant to Sections 1(a)(ii), 1(b), and 8 of Executive Order 14038.”

General License No. 13, which had authorized transactions with the Belarusian Potash Company, JSC Belaruskali, and BPC’s Ukrainian subsidiary Agrorozkvit, has been archived as it is no longer applicable. The entities have been removed from the sanctions list.

The lifting of US sanctions on Belinvestbank, the Development Bank of Belarus, and the Ministry of Finance was announced on March 19 following a meeting between Alyaksandr Lukashenka and US presidential envoy John Coale.