In December 2022, the United Nations Security Council (the ‘UNSC’) adopted a resolution which introduced a standardised humanitarian exemption across UN regimes according to which activities necessary for humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs are exempt from sanctions in the form of asset freezes imposed by the Security Council or by its Sanctions Committees. All UN sanctions regimes except the Afghanistan regulations will now include a standardised humanitarian exception to the…
On October 17, 2022, the UK HM Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”) and the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) issued a joint statement (OFSI statement here, OFAC statement here) to reiterate the close working relationship between the two agencies, explaining the rationale behind increased OFSI-OFAC co-operation and how this will manifest in practice. The statement follows a technical exchange attended by OFAC and OFSI in London, which concluded on…
What are the main changes: For breaches of financial sanctions that are committed after 15 June 2022, OFSI will be able to impose civil monetary penalties on a strict civil liability basis. This means that going forward OFSI will not have to prove that a person had knowledge or reasonable cause to suspect that they were in breach of financial sanctions. OFSI will continue to have the burden of proving that the financial sanctions breach…
On 26 February 2021, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and the US released a coordinated statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and committing to further restrictive measures, including: Ensuring that selected Russian banks are removed from the SWIFT messaging system, which facilitates global cross-border financial transfers. The affected banks have not yet been named.Imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways…