As discussed in our recent blog post (available here), the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”) has updated its guidance on enforcement and monetary penalties for breaches of financial sanctions (the “Monetary Penalties Guidance”, available here), to include a number of paragraphs setting out OFSI’s expectations around the nature and type of due diligence that companies should undertake when assessing whether an entity is owned or controlled by one or more designated persons, for sanctions purposes.
Given the significant increase in the volume of sanctioned individuals and entities (in particular under sanctions targeting Russia), and in light of increasingly complex ownership and governance structures that companies can be subject to, OFSI’s guidance provides companies with important direction on how to conduct appropriate, risk-based sanctions due diligence.
In our latest Sanctions On-Demand Webinar, we discuss:
- OFSI’s new guidance on ownership and control, including a focus on due diligence assessing (i) formal ownership and control mechanisms, (ii) influence / de facto control, and (iii) ongoing monitoring;
- the UK’s strict liability enforcement framework for breaches of financial sanctions, and the impact that this has on due diligence considerations;
- a comparison with EU and US approaches to ownership and control for sanctions purposes; and
- practical tips for clients around due diligence.
Click HERE to watch this on-demand webinar now.
If you have any follow up questions in respect of the webinar, please click here to reach out to our team.
