Actions can also include compliance and monitoring, such as reviewing disclosures by exporters of possible export control violations, prelicense checks, and postshipment verifications. See GAO, Export Controls: Post-Shipment Verification Provides Limited Assurance That Dual-use Items Are Being Properly Used, GAO-04-357 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 12, 2004); and Defense Trade: Arms Export Control System in the Post 9/11 Environment, GAO-05-234 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 16, 2005). investigate, and take punitive action against potential violators of U.S. export control laws. These authorities provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and customs Enforcement (ICE) with overlapping jurisdiction to investigate defense potential violations, and FBI, ICE, and Commerce’s Office of Export Enforcement (OEE) with overlapping jurisdiction to investigate dual-use potential violations. Inspections of items scheduled for export are routinely conducted at U.S. air, sea, and land ports, as part of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer’s responsibilities for enforcing U.S. import and export control laws and regulations at our nation’s ports of entry. CBP’s enforcement activities include inspection of outbound cargo through a risk-based approach using CBP’s automated targeting systems to assess the risk of each shipment, review and validation of documentation presented for licensable items, detention of questionable shipments, and seizure of shipments and issuance of monetary penalties for items that are found to be in violation of U.S. export control laws. According to CBP officials, almost 3 million shipments per month are exported from the United States. Investigations of potential violations of export control laws for dual-use items are conducted by agents from OEE, ICE, and FBI. Investigations of potential export control violations involving defense items are conducted by ICE and FBI agents. OEE and ICE are authorized to investigate potential violations of dual-use items. ICE is also authorized to investigate potential violations of defense items. The FBI has authority to investigate any criminal violation of law not exclusively assigned to another agency, and is mandated to investigate and oversee export control violations with a counterintelligence concern. The investigative agencies have various tools for investigating potential violations (see table 2) and establishing cases for potential criminal or administrative punitive actions. Punitive actions, which are either criminal or administrative, are taken against violators of export control laws and regulations, and may involve U.S. or foreign individuals and companies. Criminal violations are those cases where the evidence shows that the exporter willfully violated export control laws. U.S. Attorneys’ Offices prosecute export control enforcement criminal cases in consultation with Justice’s National Security Division. These cases can result in imprisonment, fines, forfeitures, and other penalties. Punitive actions for administrative violations can include fines, suspension of an export license, or denial or debarment from exporting, and are imposed primarily by State or Commerce, depending on whether the violation involves the export of a defense or a dual-use item. For example, Commerce can impose the administrative sanction of placing parties acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United State on a list that prevents their receipt of items subject to Commerce controls. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) administers and enforces economic sanctions programs primarily against countries and groups of individuals, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers. The sanctions can be either comprehensive or selective, using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals. In some cases, both criminal and administrative penalties can be levied against an export control violator. In fiscal year 2010, Justice data showed that 56 individuals or companies were convicted of criminal violations of export control laws.and Commerce reported more than $25.4 million in administrative fines and penalties for fiscal year 2010. In 2011, over a third of the major U.S. export control enforcement and embargo-related criminal prosecutions involved the illegal transfer of U.S. military, nuclear, or technical data to Iran and China. Agencies use some form of a risk-based approach when allocating resources to export control enforcement as their missions are broader than export controls. As agencies can use these resources for other activities based on need, tracking resources used solely on export control enforcement activities is difficult. Only OEE allocates all of its resources exclusively to export control enforcement as that is its primary mission, and State and the Treasury have relatively few export control enforcement staff to track. Agencies’ risk-based resource allocation approach incorporates a variety of information, including workload and threat assessment data, but has not generally included data on resources used for export control enforcement activities as agencies did not implement systems to fully track this information until recently. Given the overlapping jurisdiction of several enforcement agencies, in some cities agencies have voluntarily created local task forces that bring together enforcement resources to work collectively on cases—informally leveraging resources. Agencies determine their missions based on statutes, policy, and directives, and articulate their fundamental mission in their strategic plans.with senior agency officials, agencies with primary export control enforcement responsibility have multiple missions that extend beyond export controls as shown in table 3, except for OEE. As such, these agencies are faced with balancing multiple priorities when allocating staff resources. Based on our review of these documents as well as discussions enforcement, and as such, is the only agency that has been able to fully track the resources used on these activities. To formulate its budget and allocate its investigators, OEE conducts threat assessments with a priority related to weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and unauthorized military use; and analyzes export control enforcement case workload, including the prior year’s investigative statistics of arrests, indictments, and convictions. OEE also recently completed a field office expansion study to decide which cities would be the best locations for additional OEE field offices. In this study, OEE considered the volume of licensed and unlicensed exports and the type of high-tech items exported from different areas of the United States, and concluded that Atlanta, GA; Cincinnati, OH; Phoenix, AZ; and Portland, OR, were optimal locations, but has not received budget approval for expansion. CBP reemphasized outbound operations in the creation of its Outbound Enforcement Division in March 2009 to help prevent terrorist groups, rogue nations, and other criminal organizations from obtaining defense and dual-use commodities; enforce sanctions and trade embargoes; and increase exporter compliance. CBP determines the number of staff to allocate to outbound inspections through a risk- based approach based on prior workload and a quarterly threat matrix—which includes the volume of outbound cargo and passengers, port threat assessments, and the numbers and types of seizures and arrests at the ports for items such as firearms and currency. As of fiscal year 2010, CBP had allocated approximately 660 officers for outbound enforcement activities, but these officers can be used for other than export control-related activities at any time, when needed. For example, the Port of Baltimore has officers assigned to perform outbound activities at both the airport and seaport, some of which focus on the enforcement of controlled shipments in the seaport environment. According to the Port Director, any of these officers can be redirected at any time and often are assigned to the airport during the busy airline arrival times, to perform inbound inspection duties—based on priorities. Further, CBP does not track the hours that its officers across the country spend on export control enforcement activities, but is in the process of implementing a system to do so. CBP officials stated that determining the right mix of officers is complex and changes to its tracking system should allow for better planning and accounting for resources used for outbound activities in the future. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, Counter-Proliferation Investigations Unit focuses on preventing sensitive U.S. technologies and weapons from reaching the hands of adversaries and conducts export control investigations. To determine how many investigators it should allocate to this unit, ICE uses information including operational threat assessments and case data from the previous year, by field office, on total numbers of arrests, indictments, convictions, seizures, and investigative hours expended on export control investigations. For example, it assigns a tier level for each of its 70 field offices, based on threat assessments—ranging from 1 for the highest threat, resulting in a larger number of agents assigned to these offices; to 5 for the lowest threat, with a lower number of agents assigned. To further prioritize resources, in 2010, ICE established Counter Proliferation Investigations Centers in selected cities throughout the United States, with staff focused solely on combating illegal exports and illicit procurement networks seeking to acquire vital U.S. technology. ICE concluded that it needed to form these centers to combat the specialized nature of complex export control cases and determined that its previous method of distributing resources needed refinement, noting that some ICE field office managers had difficulty in balancing numerous competing programmatic priorities and initiatives. According to ICE officials, they plan to mitigate these concerns by having staff and facilities focused solely on export control enforcement cases, which will allow ICE to track and use this information to better determine future resource needs. The FBI, with both an investigative and intelligence mission, does not allocate resources solely for export control enforcement and officials told us they view these activities as a tool to gain intelligence that may lead to more robust cases. Nevertheless, cases involving export controls are primarily led by agents within the Counterintelligence Division. To determine the number of agents to allocate to this division, the FBI uses a risk management process and threat assessments. Several years ago, the FBI established at least one Counterintelligence squad in each of its 56 field offices. In July 2011, the FBI established a Counterproliferation Center, merging its Counterintelligence Division and its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate to better focus their efforts and resources.