The U.S. Treasury Department ("Treasury") Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") extended the expiration date of a General License ("GL") involving PDV Holding, Inc. ("PDVH") and CITGO Holding, Inc. ("CITGO"). GL 7A, which replaces GL 7, authorizes certain transactions and activities prohibited by Executive Order 13850 as they relate to PDVH, CITGO and any of their subsidiaries. GL 7A replaces the July 27, 2019 expiration date in paragraph (a) of GL 7 with an 18-month authorization that renews automatically on a monthly basis - although OFAC may revoke this authorization at any time

The U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry (the "Committee") considered the nomination of Dr. Heath P. Tarbert to become the next Chair of the CFTC. Dr. Tarbert is currently the U.S. Treasury Department ("Treasury") Assistant Secretary for International Markets. In testimony before the Committee, Dr. Tarbert stated that, if confirmed as CFTC Chair, one of his obligations would be to ensure that the derivatives markets are "transparent, competitive, financially sound and also free from fraud." He said that an understanding of the derivatives market was insufficient, and

The U.S. Treasury Department ("Treasury") Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") introduced a List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account Sanctions (the "CAPTA List"). The CAPTA List contains information on foreign financial institutions for which the opening or maintaining of a "correspondent account or a payable-through account" in the United States is barred or is subject to one or more conditions. The CAPTA List replaces the List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Part 561. Separately, OFAC issued amendments to the Iranian

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures ("CPMI") and IOSCO updated the Level 1 assessments online tracker, which shows self-reported progress on the implementation of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures for certain financial market infrastructures. According to CPMI-IOSCO, the update demonstrates that participating jurisdictions are moving forward toward implementing international standards for payment systems, central securities depositories, securities settlement systems, central counterparties and trade repositories.

A broker-dealer agreed to settle FINRA charges for failing to establish, maintain and implement a sufficient supervisory system to monitor the sales of nontraditional exchange-traded funds ("ETFs"). According to the Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent, the violations committed by Parkland Securities, LLC ("Parkland") were aggravated by the fact that it previously informed FINRA that Parkland would implement corrective measures to resolve its deficiencies, but failed to do so. To settle the charges, Parkland agreed to a censure and to pay $20,000.