John Gibson considers sanctions law post-Ukraine invasion & weighs up the robust but realistic approach of the English courts
- Covers caselaw on sanctions since President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
- Shows the English courts have taken a commercially realistic approach while refusing attempts to circumvent the sanctions regime through artificial structures.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 transformed sanctions law from a specialist regulatory discipline into a central feature of English commercial litigation. Banks, commodity traders, insurers, shipowners and professional advisers were suddenly required to determine whether counterparties, assets and transactions might expose them to criminal liability or regulatory enforcement under rapidly expanding sanctions regimes. The resulting uncertainty placed the concept of ‘ownership and control’ at the centre of international commerce. English courts have since been required to determine when a non-designated entity should nevertheless be treated as effectively sanctioned because it is owned or controlled by a designated person.
The significance of the issue lies in the extraordinary breadth of the consequences which follow from a finding of ownership or control. If
