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Enforcement Release: May 17, 2023
OFAC Settles with Murad, LLC for $3,334,286 and with a Former Senior Executive of Murad, LLC for $175,000 Related to Apparent Violations of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations
Murad, LLC (the “Company”), a cosmetics company based in El Segundo, California, has agreed to pay $3,334,286 to settle its potential civil liability for an apparent violation of OFAC sanctions on Iran. This apparent violation resulted from the Company’s participation in a conspiracy to engage in the unauthorized export of goods and services from the United States to Iran over an approximately eight-year period. The conspiracy, which ended in 2018, resulted in at least 62 exports of Company products, as well as the export of services to Iran, totaling more than $11 million. OFAC determined that the Company voluntarily self-disclosed its violation, following its acquisition by Unilever United States, Inc. (“Unilever US”),...
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1) POTENTIAL TREND TOWARD "CONSPIRACY AS CATCH-ALL" PENALTIES; APPARENT MEANS OF OFAC AVOIDING THE OTHERWISE APPLICABLE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
a) Conspiracy as a Stand-alone Civil Charge
In the case against Murad, LLC (the company), OFAC charges a single count of conspiracy, i.e. a violation of 560.203(b) of the ITSR (see section II of the Settlement Agreement), as opposed to separate violations for each underlying violation of the ITSR alleged to have arisen out of the conspiracy. Compare the British American Tobacco p.l.c. web post, issued just a few weeks prior to this one, where OFAC did the same thing in what appeared to have been a first.
The Murad, LLC case appears to be the first time ever OFAC has done this where (i) the "conspiracy"...