In three decisions last year, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) issued judgments dealing with persons charged with (amongst other crimes) making funds available to ISIS in breach of the relevant EU sanctions regulation.
One of the questions considered in the judgments is the extent to which transfers to individual members of the ISIS rank and file count as “making funds available” to ISIS itself.
The decisions are from:
In each case the accused had transferred funds to individual members of ISIS.
In the February 2023 decision, followed in those subsequent, the court stated (using a machine translation):
“Funds or economic resources are made directly available to the IS itself if they are available to any “ordinary” member located in the immediate area of activity of the (core) organization and acting in relation to the association, who is integrated into the association structures there, for use for the goals and for the purposes of the association. In this respect, it is not necessary that the funds or economic resources come into the direct control of a manager or an association member responsible for financial matters or that such higher-ranking members are given their own access”.
While this reasoning maybe specific to associations of people without overall legal personality, if the same logic were applied in a corporate context this would have significant ramifications as to the breadth of the EU’s asset freezes.