Supporting Statement

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

FOREIGN CLAIMS SETTLEMENT COMMISSION OF THE UNITED STATES

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR
REQUEST FOR OMB APPROVAL OF COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
UNDER THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT AND 5 CFR 1320

Claims of United States Nationals Against Libya

OMB Number xxxx-xxxx

FCSC 1-08

A. Justification

1. This collection of information is needed in order to enable the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission to determine the validity and amount of claims of U.S. nationals against the Government of Libya settled under the terms of the Claims Settlement Agreement Between the United States of America and the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya of August 14, 2008 (Attachment A), as implemented pursuant to the Libyan Claims Resolution Act, Pub. L. 110-301 (Attachment B) and Executive Order of October 31, 2008 (Attachment C), and referred to the Commission by the Department of State. Under 22 U.S.C. 1623 (Attachment D), the Commission has authority to adjudicate claims of U.S. nationals against Libya pursuant to the settlement agreement and the Department of State referral of December 11, 2008. (Attachment E)

2. The collected information will be used by the Commission as the basis for determining the validity and amount of claims of U.S. nationals settled in the agreement with Libya and referred by the Department of State, and to certify awards resulting from those determinations to the Secretary of the Treasury for payment out of compensation funds provided for this purpose, in accordance with 22 U.S.C. 1624-1627.

3. The Commission has developed this form to enable claimants or their legal representatives to enter the data using Adobe Reader. The Commission decided to do this so that users would have the ability to provide readable information easily and in such a manner as to allow the Commission to render decisions on their claims most efficiently.

4. The Commission is unaware of any available sources that would contain information similar to that being requested.

5. This item is not applicable. To the Commission's knowledge, there are no small businesses or other small entities included among the claimants.

6. If the collection is not conducted, the Commission will be unable to review claims referred by the Department of State and ensure that meritorious claims are compensated.

7. There are no special circumstances associated with this collection.

8. An Emergency Federal Register notice has been published to solicit public comment.

9. This item is not applicable, as no consideration has been given to "Provide any payment or gift to respondents."

10. As reflected on the draft Statement of Claim form, the information submitted by the respondents will be subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552).

11. This item is not applicable, as no "questions of a sensitive nature" will be asked.

12. Annualized costs of this collection for the respondents will consist merely of postage and photocopying expenses, which should amount to less than $10 per respondent, and expenditure of their personal time in providing the information requested. As indicated on the attached Standard Form 83-I, it is estimated that there will be approximately 100 respondents, and that the one-time response will require an average of about two hours of each respondent's time. This estimate is derived based upon experience in past claims programs where similar types of information were collected. Using 100 respondents as a baseline, we project the total burden to be approximately 200 hours.

13. There is no additional cost beyond that described above.

14. There is no additional cost to the federal government for this collection.

15. Burden number changes are due to this being a new collection.

16. The information from this collection will form the basis for decisions of the Commission. The final decisions of the Commission will be published on the Commission’s public website pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(2) in due course.

17. This item is not applicable, as the OMB Approval Number will be displayed on the information collection form.

18. There are no exceptions to the Item 19 Certification at the end of the attached OMB Form 83-I.

Draft versions of the information collection form and instructions are included as Attachments F and G. We propose to produce the form on the Commission's own printing and duplicating equipment.

B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods.

Not Applicable