As first brought to wider attention by the Global Sanctions site, the UK’s Economic Secretary has provided a written answer on the UK Parliament’s website to the question: “how many investigations by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation into breaches of Russian sanctions (a) are open and (b) have been undertaken since February 2022“.
The answer stated that 388 cases have been investigated by OFSI and closed since February 2022, and that 318 investigations are currently open.
This is a total of 706 investigations opened by OFSI into potential or alleged Russian sanctions breaches in the UK since February 2022.
In that time OFSI has imposed two fines (here and here) in relation to Russian sanctions and disclosed one other breach by Wise Payments Limited (here).
This means that 385 of OFSI’s opened Russian investigations since February 2022 were closed without further action.
As of April 2023, OFSI was reporting it had 172 lives cases ongoing, indicating that there has been a significant increase since then.