AFP: US authorities said Thursday they had imposed a 9.4 million dollar penalty on German express delivery company DHL over shipments to Iran, Syria and Sudan in alleged violation of sanctions.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US authorities said Thursday they had imposed a 9.4 million dollar penalty on German express delivery company DHL over shipments to Iran, Syria and Sudan in alleged violation of sanctions.
The penalty was part of a settlement with DHL "concerning shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria and failures to meet recordkeeping requirements," a US Treasury Department statement said.
In the settlement with the Treasury and Commerce departments, DHL had "agreed to remit 9,444,744 dollars to settle alleged violations" of the sanctions and other regulations against the three nations, the statement said.
It pointed out that "DHL's pervasive compliance failures allowed for numerous shipments to Iran and Sudan in apparent violation of Treasury and Commerce Department regulations."
"Today's joint enforcement actions signal the US government's commitment to ensuring that sanctions laws — including recordkeeping requirements — are followed carefully," said Adam Szubin, director of the US Treasury's office of foreign assets control.
DHL was accused of making more than 300 shipments to Iran and Sudan in violation of the sanctions between August 2002 and March 2007.
In addition, between December 2002 and April 2006, the company allegedly failed to maintain required records on other shipments to Iran, in violation of the sanctions.
US regulations prohibit the shipment of most goods to Iran and Sudan and require the maintenance of complete records on shipments for five years.
Descriptions of the contents of the DHL packages "were missing from thousands of air waybills," the statement said.
Many of the shipments were intercepted and reported to the Treasury by the US Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection, it added.
The settlement with DHL was reached after a five and a half year investigation.
The statement said that DHL had also agreed to hire an unaffiliated third-party consultant to conduct audits of DHL's compliance with Treasury and Commerce departments' regulations from March 2007 through 2011.
