Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

FinCEN issued a final rule under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act (31 U.S.C. § 5318A) prohibiting US covered financial institutions from opening or maintaining a correspondent account for, or on behalf of, Cambodia-based Huione Group, a foreign financial institution found to be of primary money-laundering concern. Treasury determined that Huione Group and its subsidiaries — including Haowang Guarantee, Huione Pay PLC, and Huione Crypto — laundered at least $4 billion of illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025, including funds tied to North Korean cyber-heist actors and Southeast Asian "pig-butchering" investment-scam compounds. The rule also imposes a special-due-diligence requirement on US covered institutions to guard against indirect access via foreign correspondent accounts. Effective November 17, 2025.

Türkiye's Ministry of Trade published İthalatta Gözetim Uygulanmasına İlişkin Tebliğ (No: 2023/2)'de Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Tebliğ in Resmî Gazete on 17 July 2025, doubling the unit customs (CIF) reference value that triggers the country's import-surveillance mechanism for photovoltaic cells not assembled into modules or panels (GTİP 8541.42.00.00.00), from USD 85/kg to USD 170/kg. Imports declared at or below the new threshold require a "gözetim belgesi" (supervision certificate) from the Imports General Directorate before customs clearance. The amendment entered into force sixty days after publication, on 15 September 2025. Global Trade Alert logs the intervention as "certainly harmful" and names China and Cambodia as the principal exporters affected. The measure does not block imports outright but raises the price floor below which a licensing/documentation step is triggered, functioning as a de facto minimum-price barrier against underpriced photovoltaic-cell imports — part of a broader push to protect Türkiye's domestic solar-manufacturing base as it scales toward the National Energy Plan's 52.9 GW installed-solar target.

On 13 June 2025 the Ministry of Environment (MoE) and the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) jointly issued Interministerial Prakas No. 4838, amending Cambodia's environmental-impact-assessment classification rules for all construction and mining business projects. The Prakas mandates that all businesses conducting construction and mining projects — including artisanal enterprises (investment <USD 50,000) and small-scale enterprises (USD 50,000–250,000) previously outside the formal EIA architecture — must sign an environmental-protection letter and file it with the MME prior to commencing operations; no project may operate in areas designated off-limits by the MME. The first joint MoE+MME prakas on environmental compliance extends Cambodia's EIA architecture to the full spectrum of mining-sector operators, building on the Environmental and Natural Resources Code (June 2023) and Prakas No. 8 (February 2024, EIA consulting-firm accreditation standards), and cross-references Prakas No. 3591 (May 2025) for the investment-size classification thresholds.