Maximize Electronic Signature Legitimateness for Export in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: electronic signature legitimateness for Export in United Kingdom

good afternoon everybody and welcome to today's open to export webinar giving an introduction to export controls and licenses my name is William Barnes Graham and I am the senior content editor happy institutes of exports and international trade I've been to export is a free online service helping small businesses get ready to sell overseas to our step by step articles and guides regular webinars our exploration band tool and I call three compositions you can find out about all of these on our website at .export.gov is powered by the institute of exports and international trade the uk's professional membership body for traders endorsed by the World Trade Organization and the International Chamber of Commerce as a small business champion we offer a unique range of individual and business membership benefits education and training catering for beginners fruited master's degrees and analysis and always exciting a prestigious program of events celebrating UK businesses exports at exporting achievements we will a live Q&A later on this session and you can ask questions at any points at use of the question box on the control panel to the right hand side of your screen we've already been sent loads of questions ahead of the day's webinar so it cannot guarantee we'll get through everything we receive the general principle we were dots is that for asked questions that's a relevant border audience so he won't be able to go into company specifics I such but if you do have specific questions we've been afraid so I technical help client afterwards you can also download a PDF office slides at any point I have a handout down on your control panel and you'll also be able to watch a recording of his webinar on open textbook or four slash webinars within a day of their finishing for now very it is my pleasure to welcome a great panel of speakers including Claire Harrison and Matthew Allen from the Department for international trade expert control joints units and to kick us off we have Roger Alfie the chair of the Institute's it's booking drop the fashion if you order well thank you very much will it's a real pleasure to be speaking to you this afternoon and to be speaking alongside Clare and Matt I'm looking forward to sharing some of the information we know with you and hopefully in the questions and answers session you the audience might well be able to share some of your knowledge and experience with us as well you'd like to go on to the next slide then well thank you so just to run through the agenda for this afternoon we've had an introduction to the webinar thank you will for that what I'll be doing is talking briefly about the Export Control profession then Clare and Matt will be looking specifically at the UK export controls and licenses I'll then talk about other Export Control regimes because we know that many organizations are not just subject to UK regulations but also those of other countries and therefore the complexity of the situation we're in and the importance of professional understanding of what's going on we're going to talk then briefly about updates to the control lists cover that when we get to it and also a subject of interest and discussion is the UK's transition period following brexit we then talked briefly about sanctions and then there'll be an opportunity for questions and answers so as we go through again as Will has suggested please do put questions to the panel through the online tool I'd also like to invite you to make comments about the webinar I'm sure we'll we'll ask that at the end but also if you've got any subjects that you would like to hear about future webinars then do let us know because then we can tailor what we're offering to the needs of the industry in the audience so just to talk briefly about the Export Control profession next slide please well thank you the Export Control profession is the only professional body in the UK especially for export control personnel we launched in May last year and we've already got over 75 members and we have a number of people whose applications are in process it's very exciting because there's not been an opportunity for export control professionals to be part of a an organisation before and we're very grateful to the IOA Institute of export for taking us under their wing a word for overseas attendees I noticed in the list of people who are attending this webinar there's a number of people from overseas clearly if there is an organization in your own country for Export Control professionals we would encourage you to join that if you are not aware of one or you can't find one then we're very happy for you to join our export control profession however I will say that what we can offer to people overseas is probably not as comprehensive and immediate as what we can offer people in the UK but this is an offering that we'll be pleased to develop as time goes on we're created and led by export control specialists and those of you who know me will know that I used to be the export the head of export control rolls-royce PLC and if you have a chance to look at the export control profession board on the export control profession website you'll see that we have a prestigious board steering our organization with representatives from the regulator's from manufacturing companies from shipping companies from academia and from trade associations so a wide footprint of people there our objective is to facilitate compliance with export control and sanctions regulations by promoting professional development and professional recognition of export control staff professional development is supported by providing and supporting training and development opportunities and those are also on our website and professional recognition is through post-nominal letters member of the institute of export control profession or associate member of the export control profession and we provide other resources to enable increased compliance and if you like to recognize the internet the the broad family membership of export control professions a few examples we issue blogs there's been a recent one on cloud computing which is important for anybody who has who is using cloud computing or is considering using cloud computing do read that if you get the chance we have a quarterly export control magazine last one came out in December next one will coming out in March and other opportunities as well for you to join into the export control community thank you well so what I'd like to do now is to pass over to Claire and Matt for a description of the UK trol regulations and I'll join you in a few moments when they're finished thanks for that Roger first we have a very good mix of companies on the webinar many of you are new to strategic export controls while others are experienced let's start with what the controls are all about strategic controls are in place to prevent exports that could contravene the UK global sanctions obligations could lead to destabilizing buildup of conventional weapons or the periphery ocean of weapons of mass destruction here on in I'll refer to that as WMD because it's quite a mouthful exports that could be diverted from their original intended use or expert exports that could be used for abuse of human rights the controls are wide-ranging and are enshrined in the legislation that Matt will outline later they include items if they have been designed or modified for use in military applications controls apply to actual export or trade of these items what's trade you might ask supply chain operations mean that you may instruct a sister and parent company overseas to fulfill a military order in a third country this will require you to apply for a trade control license sure loose items those items which can be used for both civil and military purposes the term also includes all goods which have non explosive uses or assist in any way with the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices again there was a broken control on these goods if they are being used for a potential WMD and use for instance nuclear or radioactive materials and the plant process them chemical or biological reagents for chemical warfare and the plant to produce them or ballistic missiles and their launch systems but it's not just the items which but which are controlled it's the software and the technology to which are required to enable the item to function the technology controls include blueprints drawings technical manuals any information necessary for the development production or use of the end item remember exchange of technology to anyone outside the UK is also controlled including putting information in an email or on a USB or even making it accessible in the cloud other controlled items are no military firearms or items that can be used for torture purposes where where of course is a presumption of a ban and radioactive sources which may pose a significant risk if falling into the wrong hands all of these controlled items are listed in the UK strategic export control list available from the export control current unit website if you don't know if your goods are controlled use the controllers classification advise service or other goods checker tool on gov dot UK there are a number of different types of sanctions applied to countries by for instance the United Nations or European Union this can also mean that you will need a license to export or in some cases there will be a ban on exporting to find out more about the different type of sanctions I suggest you visit the Gov don't you Kay website for current arms embargoes and sanctions an arms embargo relates to restrictions on trade with any item on the UK military list which i just talked about a trade function can bring normally non controlled items into the realm of control financial I mean the UK and international banks will not handle bank transfers from individuals on a sanctions list so you may not get paid so make sure you check out your end-users and also the financial sanctions list which are all on gov dot UK this is particularly important because of the end-use controls if you suspect or have been informed that your items will be used for military or WMD end-use purposes you must apply for a license these items will not necessarily be controlled in the first place the concern is that they are being sourced for WMD end-use well i've covered a fair amount of detail here and in a moment i'll be covering all the different licenses which are required for strategically controlled export but for now let's hear from Matt about the legislation which sits behind all of this thanks Claire so station I'm now going to give an overview of the legislation which provides the exports the controls that we have on exports next slide please we'll begin though I want to quickly flag that I'll be talking through the implications of the UK having left the EU and that's now be in a transition period a little bit later on in the presentation the important thing is that all the legislation I'll be talking about on this slide is currently in force and is the basis but how the controller strategic exports works I'm going to start by talking to the e-juice regulation and as Claire mentioned do use items are items which can be used for both civil and military purposes Eugenius regulation provides the legislative basis for how we control the exports of these items so now the key point is that the dual use regulation establishes that a license is required to export all your news items to countries outside the EU it also means that most your news items do not need a license exported to me II the only exception to this our G news items are listed in annex 4 of the evil news list these are two news items of particular sensitivity and include things such as stealth technology and cryptography and so these items always require an export license regardless of the destination they're being exported to it's a similar story for the export of goods which could be used for torture or capital punishments or other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment these cuts are controlled under an EU regulation and the regulation can devise the opposite controls into three categories the first Goods which have no practical use of in capital punishments or torture these include things just guillotines and gallows and all exports of these are prohibited the second category is goods which could be used for capital punishment etc but also have legitimate purposes these include things like certain pepper sprays and require a license to be exported unless the goods are remaining in the EU the third category is goods that could be used for capital punishment or torture but also have legitimate medical applications again these require a license unless they remaining within the EU the formal piece of EU legislation I'm going to touch on very briefly is the legislation surrounding firearms the EU farms directive and the EU farms regulation apply in the UK and probably what these pieces of legislation mean is that a license is required to export firearms from the UK this is on that holy European violins past which allows individuals to take personal firearms to EU countries to about an export license so those are the main new pieces vegetation which provide the export controls I'm now going to talk about the main pieces of UK legislation which provide for export controls these the Export Control Act of 2002 and the export control order of 2008 which has been amended since that date a number of times these pieces of legislation are available to read online at legislation got the UK and they set out how the rules around export controls operate what items and activities are controlled what exceptions apply and how export license is operates including provisions around record-keeping registration inspection the export control order 2008 also includes the number of schedules works out specifically which Goods are subjective controls and the countries or destinations were just subject to stricter export and trade controls so it's believed the important piece of legislation to keep in mind I know that one area which is often particularly concerned for exporters is the rules around transfers of Technology is Claire touched on earlier there's more control which personally includes controls from transfer of Technology and it's important to remember as they're mentioned that export controls includes transfers which are intangible it isn't just physical goods which are captured at a moment or even focused on updating our online guidance from a technology transfers which explains the control is a bit more detail as soon as this guidance is ready it'll be uploaded onto gov tour ek seamless Penta see online in due course the final piece of legislation on the quickly touch on is the export of radioactive sources control order from 2006 this is an order which controls the export or certain high activity radioactive sources which are listed in the order they include sources such as promethium and in a nutshell this also means that it's prohibited to export these radioactive sources unless you have a license you're exporting any of those Goods do apply for a license so that ends the kind of Whistlestop tour of the legislation which underpins our export controls but main takeaways there are a number of different piece of legislation and it's important to engage with them to understand what they mean next slide please thank you so Claire again here I spoke earlier about the controls now we're going to have a look at the light essence require just to say there is no charge for any of these licenses if you are exporting or trading or brokering there are two types of individual licenses standard and open the standard individual licenses are used for a shipment or contract where there is a specified end user these licenses are valid for a period of up to two years require and end-user undertaking on the use of the items from the ultimate end-user or consign II and they can be used for up to 100 goods lines the open individual licenses are used for ongoing contracts with multiple end users they are valid for a period of up to five years require a simple business case and also require end user undertakings there are also over 50 open general export licenses the military and you'll use items in which can be used for permitted control list entries and enters destinations you can use them provided you could meet other terms and conditions which are specified in the licenses these type of licenses involve a one-off registration for use they include initial exports and activities not related to the initial export for instance exporting a controlled item after repair if you're trading in sanctioned destinations and are supplying financial services or providing technical assistance for a project you will need to apply for an appropriate license talk to the export control joint unit to find out more about these and how to apply transshipment licenses are only required when controlled goods are transitions is not in place for the end-user destination to find out more on the controls or licenses use the export control training course export control joint unit training courses which will be eligible for continuous professional development points under the export control profession next slide please the UK license system is electronic it's called spire you register as a user and make all applications using your account including for transfers of Technology licenses will be assessed for risk against a set of eight criteria you can also use spire to ask us to check out your end-user and to determine whether your goods are on a control list that's called the controllers classification service if you need to find out more about using spire please sign up for the export control giant unit license course you must declare to customs if the license is required and show the issued licenses if the standard license is apply except the transfers of Technology but open licenses commercial documentation must clearly state the licence being used next slide please compliance and due diligence responsibility chief is the customs digital system for tracking oil exports that leave the UK it is programmed to flag when an export license is required and it is also linked to spire the electronic data licensing database if a license is in place and there are no other concerns the shipment will be green routed if not the groups will be stopped the open licenses trade licences and transfers of Technology these are not declared to customs you will receive a visit from the export control joint unit compliance inspectors to find out more about these visits read the guide on compliance visits on gov dot uk' there are a range of penalties applied by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and Crown Prosecution Service for non-compliance these range from Goods confiscations financial penalties and civil penalties with a maximum jail sentence of ten years don't let this happen to you find out about exporting compliantly with the profession slide please are you ready Thank You Clare well thank you Clare and map for that Whistlestop tour of the UK regulations what I want to talk about now is that how to turn that information into something that your organization can use to ensure compliance I think if you like the starting point is to find out what it is your organization is exporting in a way that might sound obvious but in fact when you delve into some situations you might find that there are exports going on that you don't know about and it's important for you as export control professionals to find out all of the what sort of being made of course you only actually have to worry about export control if any of those are strategic goods that fall into any of the categories that we've just been hearing about but just to remind you a point that Claire emphasized that you need to know what the items are whether they're good software or technology what the the format of those things are and what their destinations are and the routes that they go by and that's if it's if it's physical export the physical routes that the items are going by but if it's a software or technology then it might be the electronic routes by which they are being exported now we've looked at the UK regulations in a high level of detail many organizations particularly international organisations are subject not just to the UK regulations but other regulations as well while we're part of the EU the UK regulations are aligned with the new regulations in many places but not all we'll hear a bit more about what the future might hold but if you've got an organization that has is handling goods or technology or software from other countries then you must be aware of whether those countries have any jurisdiction on the exports that you're making I've mentioned here the UK Europe US and others and many professionals will know that the u.s. regulations are extraterritorial and require quite a lot of attention and understanding in order to comply with them understanding of all exporting methods again we've talked here about whether we talk about shipping many people forget about exports that are made by hand carrying items electronic communications are important as we've heard but also if you're allowing access to your server in your country or another country if that access is from a third country then that is can be regarded in export and will need an export license if it's strategic technology one thing that I would like to highlight and is again sometimes forgotten is that there are complex regulations about carrying hand carrying electronic equipment laptops and the like if those that electronic and equipment contains certain levels of encryption now many laptops these days do contain encryption systems to protect your company's data that are subject to you or to us or the UK encryption export controls and so an understanding of those regulations is pretty important as well otherwise you might find that your your employee is stopped at a border and their laptop removed from them so do watch out for that one there's an important point down here as well about ex works there has been in the past a belief I don't know how prevalent it is today that if you're on ex works terms then you as the exporter are no longer responsible for export control and getting the licenses that is not the case if you even if you're under ex words you as the exports have responsibility for obtaining and complying with licenses and this gives me an opportunity to plug an article that will be appearing in the export control magazine Alex Turner of Customs Connect has published in the past a series of 10 common mistakes for exporters which we are serializing in export control magazine and this is one of her ten common mistakes so it will be appearing in the magazine in the near future looking out for situation of ex works another highlight that I'd like to make is that whereas as Claire has indicated the UK regulations really revolve around whether when an item whatever it is is exported or made accessible into in another country if you're dealing with US export controlled items then you also have to think of about deemed exports and this is where an export is deemed to have been exported an item is deemed to be exported to another country if it is given to or access to by a national of that country now the regulations are quite complex but it could well be that if you've got a non UK citizen working in your team and your US export license allows the data to come or the goods to come from the u.s. to the UK then allowing access to that by somebody who's not a UK citizen could be a deemed export and also require licensing there's a lot of detail behind that that would need understanding and analysis so you can see that there's a lot to be done by an export control person they've got to have eyes and ears everywhere and they've got to have a very detailed knowledge of all the exports and the movement of goods and Technology and software around their organization as well as a good understanding of all the relevant export control regulations so the export control professional needs regular training but of course they can't have eyes and ears throughout their organisation and so it's important that all the people in your organization who are capable of making an export are aware of the export control regulations at a level that is suitable for their role and so it's important to consider what training you need to give everybody in your organization in order to avoid them making inadvertent illegal exports and this is another role for an export control manager export control professional is working out what communications they need to receive and making sure that those communications are delivered and understood so to cover all these situations it's quite a good idea to have an internal compliance program now again there's lots of guidance around on internal compliance programs which cover all the sorts of things that we've been talking about today and it's a good idea for your organization to have one there is no regulatory requirement for you to have one but we thoroughly recommend it and if you want to know more of our internal compliance programs then by all means do contact do contact us and help we'll will help you in the development of that like to move on to the next slide then William because of changing subject slightly here and that is one of the things I wanted to highlight is that the control lists are updated regularly unfortunately for us export control professionals export control is not static there is always changing happening changes happening and one of the things that export control professionals need to do is to keep track of the Train changes now the UK and EU control lists are updated appropriately approximately every six months to reflect changes to UK and EU regulations and sometimes those changes drive changes in open licenses as well so it's very important that we keep track of the changes that are taking place the latest update was January this year and it was well signposted in notices to exporters and the control lists have been changed and there's been notices to say that the open that the some of the open licenses have changed self-consistency as well so an important job is to keep an eye on the changes to see if and how your organization is affected I thought I'd give you a bit of an example at the moment we published the changes in export control magazine and I happen to have it open in front of me here I'm not going to go through the whole lot because there's a lot of detail but just to give you an idea of what I would have done in this situation there's one of the changes and I'll read it to you it says deletion of entry for technology for diffusion bonding for gas turbine engine components 903 a 7 now I know that rolls-royce uses diffusion bonding for gas turbine engine components and I am pretty sure that in exchanging that information between the different teams in rolls-royce we would have exported that technology and therefore we would have an actual control license to allow that exchange the deletion of that entry means that we no longer need those licenses now I wouldn't pretend to know all the places we use diffusion bonding for the components nor all the places where we would be exchanging and exporting that technology so what I would do in that situation is to get in touch with the people involved in diffusion bonding whether those are the scientists who develop the technology or the engineers who design components that use that technology or the or the procurement people who are sending out specific Asians to suppliers and potential suppliers for technology for goods that are but for manufacturing goods that are going to be made using that technology and find out where all that technology is being exported find out what export licenses it's being exported under and then reconfiguring everything so that we no longer start we can stop using those licenses because no longer required so that's the sort of job that you would do when the licenses come out I'm sorry when the changes to the the control list come out there are about 20 changes on here I don't know which ones would apply to any given organization but that's the job to do just to let you know it's not just the UK and EU list that can change regularly the u.s. regulations are changing frequently as well those are all flags on the websites of the DD T C in the Department of State for the ITAR and the BIS website of the Department of Commerce for the e AR regulations so again keeping track of all those changes an important part of that job next slide please so just as we'd like to move on to transition and perhaps I can pass this on to Claire and Matt absolutely thanks Roger so where we are now now the UK has left the EU we're now in this transition period mr. beard will be up until 11 o'clock on the 31st of December this year and the first thing or two highlights is that we in the export control joint unit sent out a notice to exporters about export control during the transition periods it was published on the 29th of January and can be accessed online gothic UK you search notice of exporters you should be able to find it easily I really encourage you to read full because it contains the most we can update set of information about the transition period it also has to notice as well after reading it a few key points L to share the first is that the current export licensing arrangements continue to apply until the end of a transition period or the 31st December the legislation I spoke about earlier continues to remain in force and is live at the moment that means that licensing carries on as previously for all of the items that we control you remember that we published an open general export license last year specifically to cover the export of join use items from the UK to the EU during the transition period this license is not required as I mentioned earlier no license is required to move during use items between the UK and the e except for those items on Alex for additionally during the transition period no licenses are required to move goods which could be used for torture or capital punishments between the UK and the EU and military goods require a license regardless of the destination as was the case previously as from the arrangements for after a transition period ends these are dependent on the nature of elation ship that is agreed of the EU will communicates any necessary actions that you may need to take as soon as possible and this takes me to the last key point but I wants to make in relation to the end of the transition period and that's to encourage you to sign up for notices to exporters on Gothel UK now pay you'll receive an email alerts with the key information that you need and also to sign up for the business release bulletin and it's Ron Berger Department for business energy and vegetable strategy wealth final applaud for me on transition period of preparedness is that the export control joint unit run a series of seminars and briefings so if you feel like you want to improve your knowledge of export controls or age your preparedness in advance of the end of the transition period we're happy to run such events for you as a member will share more information about arrangements for after the transition period next slide please so now so - so Matt are you heading back to me Matt crashed you there no eyes yeah humanity thank you very much right I just wanted to before we finish and go into the questions and answers just talk a little bit more about sanctions Claire mentioned them earlier on in the session there's a couple of things I wanted to highlight for those who are who get involved in in sanctions many Export Control professionals do get involved in sanctions and again it can be quite a complicated area and so I think I think it's worthwhile just touching on it really a lot of what I've written down here measures include arms embargoes and other trade control restrictions these are things that claire has already mentioned in the context of the UK and UK guidance she said is on the UK website and as matt has just indicated new sanctions will continue to play in the UK until the end of the end of the year but as I sort of implied in the in the previous section other countries also have their own sanctions regimes and if you handle items under their jurisdictions then you need to comply with those regulations as well a couple of points I just like to make down here one is that those lists are changing a lot frequently in fact if you follow Gary Stanley's or any other daily blogs you will see that the u.s. regulations are changing the denied last parties lists apparently daily and just keeping track of your exports to those sorts of whether they're caught by those regulations can be quite difficult there are a number of organizations that provide denied parties lists and deny parties screening so you can sign up to those and they undertake to keep the list up to date so that you can do a daily check of what you're exporting away or exporting to or if you're doing very specific activities with certain countries then you can do special checks for deny parties lists in those organizations as well so there are a number of tools out there that can be accessed either directly or if you're a small organization you might be able to tap into them by having some sort of contract with an organization that will can use them for you the other thing I just wanted to mention briefly is that there's quite a lot of discussion going on at the moment about conflicts of sanctions regulations with the I'm going to have to be careful what wording are you so but with the removal of some of the u.s. content involvement in the jcpoa with iran then they have introduced some additional sanctions on american items being exported to Iran but it could well be that those items are embedded in European items that are being exported to around legitimately and so there are some cases in point where the US sanctions sorry the EU have brought in a blocking sanction which means that to comply with the US sanction is illegal in the u you and so organizations are faced with the decision of whether to comply with whether not to comply with the US regulations or not to comply with the EU regulations and there have been some court cases on that I was talking about this to some people last week and they said this is not a new phenomenon and they've come across the same sort of thing Oh when they're moving items from countries like Russia where again there might be conflicts of sanctions if you find yourself in that situation well first of all look out for that situation could be caught in it if you can avoid it but if you do get caught in it then I advise that you contact your legal department or a lawyer to help you through that very difficult situation but I'm just flagging it as something you might want to keep an eye open for so that's the thrust of what we're talking about just to go through the sorts of things we've talked about over this webinar I gave an introduction to the actual control profession Claire and Matt talked about UK export controls and licenses we looked at other Export Control regimes and the importance for export control control professionals to have a professional understanding of not just the regulations but have also also the exports that are made from their organization we've looked at the way the control lists are kept up to date and therefore it's updated frequently so it's important that you keep up-to-date with those lists we touched on the transition period look out for change