United States sanctions the ICC while licensing essential transactions

On October 9, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added the International Criminal Court itself to the Specially Designated Nationals list and simultaneously issued General Licenses 13 through 16. The licenses authorize specified transactions involving the Court, telecommunications and enterprise software, pension payments and certain ICC detainees that would otherwise be prohibited. For law firms, banks, technology suppliers and treaty-state institutions, the institutional designation creates a wider counterparty and facilitation problem than individual sanctions, while the carve-outs make over-compliance a material legal and operational risk. Clients should map payments, cloud services, communications, pensions, representation and detainee-related activity to the exact license text rather than apply a blanket prohibition to every ICC touchpoint.