UK Trends and Developments Contributed by: John Binns, BCL Solicitors LLP
course, are otherwise entirely lawful and available to clients without discrimination. Forfeiture? Early rhetoric from the Johnson government about restricting Russians’ access to UK bank accounts has so far not been translated into law, but the trend of expanding designation criteria and service restrictions into ever greater categories of people is not encour - aging. In parallel with this, debates continue about the prospect of forfeiting Russian assets, apparently without much care to distinguish between assets belonging to the Russian state and those belonging to private parties. A new obligation on DPs (on the Russia and Belarus lists) to report their assets (with fines of up to half the value of the assets available if reports are not accu - rately filed) suggests one option for effectively transi - tioning from freezing of assets to seizing (or forfeiting) them. Another option may be the use of proceeds of crime laws, which (if the comments of Sir Keir Starm - er, now our prime minister, are to be taken seriously) may be presumed to apply to anyone in possession of money who has also ever had an interest in Russian business. In the context of measures intended to pro - tect the values of liberal democracy against arbitrary authoritarianism, any drift in law or rhetoric that makes such assumptions, or is so ready to impose such dis - criminatory restrictions on an entire population, needs to be treated with scepticism. A broadening agenda The experience of Russia (and Belarus) sanctions’ expansion since 2022 would appear to have embold - ened the UK government to make greater use of sanctions as a tool, including for purposes that would traditionally be considered part of a criminal law enforcement agenda, and in foreign policy contexts that are often controversial. At the time of writing, the recent, current and forthcoming examples include: • continued use of the anti-corruption regime to target those suspected of involvement in overseas bribery and/or misappropriation of public assets, sometimes in conjunction with proceeds of crime laws;
• use of the human rights regime to tackle a diverse range of issues, including the involvement of the Chinese government in persecution of the Uyghur population of Xinjiang province, gender-based violence against women and girls in Iran, Syria and elsewhere, suspected violent settlors of Palestin - ian territories in Israel, and (controversially) certain members of the Israeli government; and • a new regime (yet to be brought into law at the time of writing) targeting those involved in illegal immi - gration, including the transport of asylum seekers across the Channel in small boats. The recent scaling back of sanctions against Syria in the UK and other countries illustrates how foreign policy priorities can influence the treatment of differ - ent parties. Some groups, which have faced sanc - tions or been designated under terrorism legislation at various points, continue to be sanctioned due to their past actions. In contrast, other groups seem to be pardoned for similar conduct. As with the scaling back of sanctions against Iran some years ago, this also provides a test of how non- state actors (particularly businesses in sanctioning countries) respond to situations of continued volatility and risk, notwithstanding the relative speed of gov - ernments’ policy changes and amendments to legal provisions. “The Right Thing”? The context of all these creative uses of and changes in sanctions regimes, in the UK as elsewhere, is the government’s appeal to moral values (and to its related agendas in AML compliance and economic crime) to justify the imposition of restrictive measures on those targeted, and indeed the removal of those restrictions when circumstances change. Sustaining this can be particularly challenging when politics come into play. Reasonable arguments can emerge both domestical - ly and internationally – not only between those who target others and those who are being targeted, but also among governments that have historically aligned with one another. Looking to the future, while at the time of writing, the prospect of positive changes in international trouble spots seems remote, perhaps the volatility of inter -
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