As of May, 127 UK-registered companies admitted to violating sanctions against Russia, according to an official response from the Treasury seen by the Financial Times.
As noted, companies voluntarily admit to violating sanctions in order to mitigate punishment — although, as Pinsent Masons financial crime specialist Stacey Keane points out, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to prosecuting such violations: it can range from a warning letter to a criminal case.
Keane adds that Russian business is integrated into the world economy much more strongly than Iranian or North Korean, and it is more difficult to comply with sanctions against many individuals and legal entities.
A newspaper source close to the Financial Sanctions Implementation Office assures that the department has not gathered “excessively punish for voluntary mistakes,” and therefore audits will take into account a variety of mitigating factors.
In addition, the Times cites the example of the Scottish semiconductor company FTDI: their products were found in a Russian tank near Kiev in 2022 , however, this was not recognized as a violation of sanctions, although the products belong to dual-use goods — the newspaper’s publication is retold by “Important Stories”.