Introduction On 22 July 2025, the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”), which is responsible for the enforcement of financial sanctions in the UK, opened a public consultation on proposed amendments to its civil monetary penalty procedures. The consultation (available here) seeks input on five key categories of amendments to OFSI’s current civil enforcement processes as follows: Responding to the consultation The deadline to provide responses to the consultation is 23:59 London time on…
On 18 July 2025, the UK Government announced a lowering of the Oil Price Cap (“OPC”) to further inhibit Russia’s ability to use oil revenues to finance its illegal invasion of Ukraine. The OPC was first introduced in December 2022 to reduce Russia’s oil revenues in response to the invasion of Ukraine that same year. The OPC prevents G7 companies from shipping, insuring or servicing any Russian crude oil sold above the OPC price of…
On 17 July 2025, the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”) launched a series of new online forms for parties looking to submit licence applications or report information such as suspected breaches of financial sanctions. The new forms aim to streamline the submission process and to avoid incomplete or incorrect submissions through the introduction of mandatory fields and built-in guidance notes, thereby reducing the need for follow-up questions and enabling OFSI to provide…
The UK Parliament has recently introduced the Arms Trade (Inquiry and Suspension) Bill (the “Bill”), which aims to ensure that arms sold to foreign states are not used in violation of international law. It is currently pending a second reading in the House of Commons. The Bill’s primary objective is to ensure that the UK’s arms exports comply with international law and it makes provision for an independent inquiry into (i) the end use of…