The Month of August 2020 finally brought us all the confirmation of the little doubt, which allowed unscrupulous brokers and intermediaries to employ the tools of LOI and POF to skim people’s financial information. Most of the agents/scammers make you sign NDAs and expect you to remain mute about their criminal activities. Very often they are able to coerce buyers into a flawed concept of NDAs operating on ‘trade-secrets’ and prevent buyers from asking valid questions in the interests of proper due diligence.
Whether a party can enforce an NDA to conceal fraud or crime, is something I intend to go into further detail in my blogs in the near future. People need to realize when its time to blow the whistle and call a spade a spade. If some agent or buyer is coercing you into NDAs and then continuing to conceal material facts of their relationship with 3M or access to private stock, you must report this to 3M and Crime Investigation Authorities.
In the Memorandum signed on April 3, 2020 the President noted that “it is the policy of the United States to prevent domestic brokers, distributors, and other intermediaries” from diverting five types of covered material overseas. The Memorandum directed the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Administrator of FEMA, to “use any and all authority available under section 101 of the [DPA] to allocate to domestic use, as appropriate…. (Source: President’s Memorandum – Allocating Certain Scarce or Threatened Health and Medical Resources to Domestic Use)
This link below https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/allocation-rule-personal-protective-equipment-exports. This new Order was released on the 10th of August defining further the previous Defence Production Order and Trump’s orders which seek to stop 3M from allowing any exports.
This covers 5 types of PPE exports from USA which were prohibited from Exportation in April 2020:
As per Rule § 328.103 of Use: A Rule by the Agency on
(1) N95 Filtering Face piece Respirators, including devices that are disposable half-face-piece non-powered air-purifying particulate respirators intended for use to cover the nose and mouth of the wearer to help reduce wearer exposure to pathogenic biological airborne particulates;
(2) Other Filtering Facepiece Respirators (e.g.,those designated as N99, N100, R95, R99, R100, or P95, P99, P100), including single-use, disposable half-mask respiratory protective devices that cover the user’s airway (nose and mouth) and offer protection from particulate materials at an N95 filtration efficiency level per 42 CFR 84.181;
(3) Elastomeric, air-purifying respirators and appropriate particulate filters/cartridges;
(4) PPE surgical masks, including masks that cover the user’s nose and mouth and provide a physical barrier to fluids and particulate materials; and
(5) PPE gloves or surgical gloves, including those defined at 21 CFR 880.6250(exam gloves) and 878.4460 (surgical gloves) and such gloves intended for the same purposes.
August 2020 Allocation Order covers the following PPE:
FEMA in close coordination with CBP and the members of the Export Cargo Review Working Group will review shipments of the following PPE materials and has the legal power to detain or confiscate them.
- Surgical N-95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators,including devices that are disposable half-face-piece non-powered air-purifying particulate respirators intended for use to cover the nose and mouth of the wearer to help reduce wearer exposure to pathogenic biological airborne particulates;
- PPE surgical masks,including masks that cover the user’s nose and mouth and provide a physical barrier to fluids and particulate materials;
- PPE nitrile gloves, specifically those defined at 21 CFR 880.6250 (exam gloves) and 878.4460 (surgical gloves) and other such nitrile gloves intended for the same purposes.
- Level 3 and 4 Surgical Gowns and Surgical Isolation Gowns that meet all the requirements in ANSI/AAMI PB70 and ASTM F2407 – 06 and are classified by Surgical Gown Barrier Performance based on AAMI PB70.
We are aware many scammers and dishonest brokers are making claims that they can buy cheap masks from 3M Direct from US stock. This is extremely ridiculous, given the current law in force, and the way things will evolve further as we see further PPE shortages break out.
Basically, now that the second wave of COVID is here, FEMA USA will absolutely not allow any masks to leave the UK.The same scammers will now tell you that they have ‘3M lawyers in California’ or somewhere in USA who are very ‘busy’ or they are delaying handing over the documents.
https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/allocation-rule-personal-protective-equipment-exports.
If these offers sound too convenient and too good to be true, then you need to hear about our investigations into where ‘Escrow’ funds disappear once they do into the Seller ‘Escrow’ accounts of scammers.Sadly, lawyers are in cahoots with such scammers, which means that now countries should take definitive legal action against lawyers who facilitate PPE fraud in the name of client-lawyer privilege and IOLTA accounts.
This Memorandum of the Whitehouse for the 3M Company https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-order-defense-production-act-regarding-3m-company/
Presidential Memorandum on Order Under the Defense Production Act Regarding 3M Company (Apr.2, 2020), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-acti ons/memorandum-order-defense-production-act-regardi ng-3m-company/; see 50 U.S.C.A. § 4511(b).
Previous President TRUMP’s orders were equally strict, as you can study them here.
https://www.fema.gov/news-release/20200726/fema-cbp-joint-statement-defense-production-act-ppe
