- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-04-06T21:19:00
Microsoft will pay more than $3.3 million to settle charges from two federal agencies its subsidiaries violated sanctions laws and export controls across their dealings in four sanctioned countries and Ukraine’s Crimea region, which is under Russian control.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) combined to penalize Microsoft for 1,339 apparent sanctions violations and seven transactions with entities under export control restrictions. The apparent violations included sales to prohibited jurisdictions in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia, and the Crimea region of Ukraine, the agencies said Thursday in separate press releases.
Microsoft self-reported the apparent violations to both agencies, cooperated with the investigations, and remediated issues that predated Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that followed. OFAC judged the lapses to be non-egregious.
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Penalties against companies including British American Tobacco, Wells Fargo, and Microsoft demonstrate the multiple ways in which businesses can run afoul of U.S. sanctions—an area receiving increased scrutiny by regulators.
British American Tobacco will pay more than $635 million to settle allegations the company violated U.S. sanctions against North Korea using a complex, yearslong scheme to import tobacco products into the country.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security updated its guidelines to further clarify the advantages of voluntary self-disclosure to the agency when export control violations are uncovered.
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