Last Friday, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementaton (OFSI), part of HM Treasury, issued its annual review of its operations from April 2017 to March of this year. Interesting stats:
- 2077 total targets
- 122 targets were added over the past year, mostly from the North Korea (96) and ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida counter terrorism (17) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (4) programs.
- 18 of the targets were added under the “avoidance of delay” program instituted by the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which lets OFSI add UN sanctions designations without waiting for the EU to pass a corresponding regulation.
- OFSI’s search facility is slated to get fuzzy search capabilities in 2018-2019
- OFSI issued a new order under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 which renewed the asset freezes on the 2 individuals accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko.
- As of September 2017, 12.8 Billion GBP in assets were frozen, with the overwhelming majority (over 12 Billion GBP) being associated with the Libya program)
- OFSI received 122 reports of sanctions breaches, with a reported value of 1.35 Billion GBP
- “It is likely that OFSI will impose monetary penalties in 2018-2019” But the majority of current cases will not result in a monetary penalty.
- OFSI issued 51 licenses in 2017-2018, of which 27 were for legal fees, 10 were for basic needs, 5 were for routine holding and maintenance costs, and 6 were for multiple reasons.
A good read!
Link:
Categories: Newsletters and Reports OFSI Updates Regulatory Reviews
Mr. Watchlist 
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