Last week, Canada announced two sets of amendments to the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations in coordination with its allies at the G7 Summit in Japan. Additionally, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) updated its April 2022 guidance on Russia-related anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions evasion risks and the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) added a number of Canadian companies to its Specially Designated Nationals list (SDN List). Amendments…
The Government of Canada recently introduced Part 1 of the budget implementation bill (Bill C-47), which completed its second reading before the House of Commons and has been referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. The Bill proposes novel amendments, including “deemed ownership” provisions (the “Deeming Provisions”) to the Special Economic Measures Act (“SEMA”) and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (the “Sanctions Laws”)[1] and it demonstrates that the Government intends to rely…
The G7 announced the creation of a new Enforcement Coordination Mechanism “to bolster compliance and enforcement of our measures and deny Russia the benefit of G7 economies” on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Having focused on the enforcement of sanctions by the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, Germany, France, and Italy in the past weeks, we continue our overview with enforcement trends in Canada. Our next instalment will look at sanctions enforcement from the perspective of…
On August 9, 2021, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada significantly escalated sanctions against Belarus in a multilateral effort to put pressure on the current Lukashenko regime. These sanctions were announced on the first anniversary of the fraudulent elections held in Belarus on August 9, 2020 and follow a series of previous measures against Belarus, including most recently the coordinated measures between the UK, US, Canada and the EU in June (see our…