US sanctions over 40 people, entities for corruption, rights abuses

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - The US Treasury Department on Friday said it imposed sanctions on more than 40 individuals and entities across nine countries for corruption and human rights abuses.

“Corrupt actors and human rights abusers both rely on deficiencies in the international financial system to perpetrate their activities,” Brian Nelson, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

“Over the past year, the Treasury has made combatting corruption and serious human rights abuse a top priority, including through the use of financial sanctions and addressing vulnerabilities in the US and international financial systems. By exposing the egregious behavior of these actors, we can help disrupt their activities, dismantle their networks, and starve them of resources,” he added.

The sanctioned individuals and entities are from North Korea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guinea, Iran, Mali, Philippines, Russia, and the Tibetan autonomous region of China.

“Over the course of 2022, the Treasury took numerous actions to promote accountability for human rights abusers and corrupt actors across the world, including sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities including in the Western Balkans, Belarus, Liberia, Guatemala, the Russian Federation, Burma, and Iran,” the statement said.

The latest series of sanctions are a key part of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to implement the first-ever US Strategy for Countering Corruption, released in December last year, it added.

The strategy, according to a previous White House statement, lays emphasis on “the transnational dimensions of the challenges posed by corruption, including by recognizing the ways in which corrupt actors have used the US financial system and other rule-of-law based systems to launder their ill-gotten gains.”