Sanctions 2025

FRANCE Law and Practice Contributed by: William Julié, Amélie Beauchemin, Camille Gosson and Elena Moreno, WJ Avocats

• the issuance in April 2025 – by the French media regulator Arcom – of an order to Eutelsat to cease the broadcasting of two channels owned or con - trolled by JSC National Media Group, which is a designated person under the EU’s Russian sanc - tions. More generally, since 2022, several criminal investiga - tions have been launched in France against Russian oligarchs for circumventing EU sanctions, primar - ily involving money laundering, tax fraud and asset concealment. In March 2024, proceedings targeted Ruslan Goryukhin and Mikhail Opengeym, accused of hiding over EUR70 million in real estate through offshore structures. In 2022, Igor Sechin became the subject of an investigation after his yacht was seized in La Ciotat for attempting to evade asset freezing measures. In 2023, Alexey Kuzmichev was indicted in Paris for aggravated tax fraud and sanctions vio - lations. Assets linked to Artur Ocheretny and Iekat - erina Solotsinskaya were also seized in the Basque Country and Paris in similar cases. Since 2023, the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and the anti-organised crime unit (Junalco) have intensified their investigative activities targeting individuals and entities under EU sanctions. 2.2.5 Mitigation Article 132-78 of the French Criminal Code provides for two mitigating circumstances that are applica - ble only to certain offences, when provided by law, namely: • an individual who attempted to instigate an offence but alerted the administrative or judicial authorities, and therefore prevented the offence from being committed and, where applicable, made it possible to identify the other perpetrators or accomplices, is exempt from punishment; and • the sentence will be reduced if the perpetrator of an offence notified the administrative or judicial authority and thus made it possible to put a stop to the offence, to prevent the offence from caus - ing damage or to identify other authors or accom - plices. At the EU level, Article 9 of Directive (EU) 2024/1226 provides for two different mitigating circumstances,

and requires that member states implement at least one in their legal system: • when the offender provides the competent authori - ties with information they would not otherwise have been able to obtain, helping them to identify or bring to justice the other offenders; and • when the offender provides the competent authori - ties with information they would not otherwise have been able to obtain, helping them to find evidence. French law is reluctant to take mitigating circumstanc - es into account in general, and already provides for the first mitigating circumstance required by the Direc - tive. The second one, which is a lot broader, was not integrated into French law when the Directive was implemented. 2.2.6 “Strict Liability” Violations of sanctions, as provided by Article 459 of the French Customs Code cited in the foregoing, are referred to in French law as formal offences, which, as opposed to material offences, are constituted by the mere characterisation of the behaviour, without the prosecution having to prove the underlying intent to actually violate sanctions. The French sanctions regimes therefore operate on the basis of strict liability. Strict liability does not apply to all offences under French law, but it does apply to sanctions-related offences, which are treated as formal offences. In other areas of law, criminal liability generally requires mens rea (intent or negligence), unless otherwise specified. France applies the derogations provided by the Coun - cil of the EU’s Decisions and Regulations in its differ - ent sanctions regimes. Currently, most of the sanctions-related matters con - cern Russia. In this regard, Council Decision 2014/145/ CFSP and Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 of 31 July 2014 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine provide for several derogations to its sanctions, including: 2.3 Licensing 2.3.1 Derogation

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