Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

UK sanctions enforcement: NCA prioritises asset freezes and civil tools; prosecutions limited as CPS reviews; court challenges largely fail, Supreme Court appeals pending

Published on: 14 January 2025

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

Prosecuting oligarchs

Prosecuting oligarchs is only one gauge of how effective Britain’s sanctions regime has been, which has made their lives ‘more difficult in the UK’, according to Celestino Calabrese, the deputy head of illicit finance at the National Crime Agency (NCA). Action for sanctions breaches has taken time to bite, notably, yet curbs on finance have stripped oligarchs of wealth and mobility while stopping their facilitators from moving assets beyond the authorities’ reach, Calabrese told Law360 in an interview.

Britain’s success in tracing holdings and securing cooperation from the regulated sector overall is ‘why there seems to be a relatively low level of criminal enforcement activity’. As a result, indeed, it is ‘extremely difficult for designated parties to circumvent financial sanctions controls’, Calabrese said. ‘The people that we’re looking at are very serious, and they’re looking at us and what we’re doing’, here, he added. The UK’s sanctions framework has withstood multiple legal challenges, and officials have frozen an estimated £23bn in assets while designating around 1,800 individuals and 291 entities since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022...

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