BIS slaps three-year export denial order on Oregon freight forwarder for compliance failures
The US Bureau of Industry and Security (‘BIS’) has issued a three-year export denial order against USGoBuy LLC, a Portland-based package forwarder that had received a suspended penalty to resolve previous alleged violations of the Export Administration Regulations (‘EAR’).
On 17 June 2021, USGoBuy entered into a settlement agreement with BIS to resolve two alleged violations of the EAR involving unlicensed exports of riflescopes to end users in China and the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’), which required the company to conduct an audit of its export control compliance program covering the 12-month period after the agreement and provide a detailed plan of corrective actions if the audit identified any violations.
The audit identified 176 failures to make Electronic Export Information filings and additional exports for which USGoBuy failed to maintain adequate records as required by the EAR, BIS said in a 17 June news update.
‘Despite these violations and the significant and continued compliance failures identified through the audit, USGoBuy did not implement corrective actions to address these issues,’ BIS said.
It explained that after the audit, in November 2022, ‘Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) interdicted a shipment of an export-controlled item being sent to USGoBuy’s Oregon warehouse for a customer located in China. HSI added conspicuous labels to the shipping box stating that an export license was required, and replaced the item with one that did not require authorization. Despite the export control markings, USGoBuy exported the package to China the same day that it was received.’
‘If a forwarding company – with an entire business model based on exports – fails to implement an adequate compliance program even while subject to a suspended denial order, it should not be able to export items subject to the EAR from the United States,’ said Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce.
