{"id":120,"date":"2023-08-31T04:48:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T08:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/?p=120"},"modified":"2024-03-15T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T13:10:53","slug":"uks-ofsi-enforces-and-gives-wise-words-of-compliance-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/2023\/08\/31\/uks-ofsi-enforces-and-gives-wise-words-of-compliance-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"UK’s OFSI enforces and gives Wise words of compliance advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) has announced<\/a> its most recent enforcement action, coupled with changes to its Guidance<\/em> on its attitude to enforcement.<\/p>\n

On 29 June 2022 a new person was added to the UK\u2019s sanctions list as a \u201cDesignated Person\u201d. At 4am the next morning a debit card in that Designated Person\u2019s name, but relating to a separate company (albeit one owned or controlled by the Designated Person) was used to withdraw \u00a3250. OFSI\u2019s published action relates to Wise Payments Limited (Wise), the regulated financial services firm with which the account was held. While Wise had reacted to the designation of its customer by blocking transfers into or out of the account, its policy was not to stop debit cards on the basis that it often had a lot of false positives with sanctions screening and that it had a duty to its customers as well. The debit card was not blocked until the after the weekend as its sanctions team did not work on the weekend. No further withdrawals were made over this period.<\/p>\n

OFSI\u2019s view in its notice is that blocking debit cards while ascertaining if a screening match is genuine is a wholly proportionate policy for managing sanctions risk. Further, not having a sanctions team to review screening hits over the weekend was insufficient.<\/p>\n

Thus while the value of the breach was low, and Wise self-reported promptly and co-operated, OFSI applied its \u201cseverity\u201d test and determined that Wise\u2019s actions amounted to a moderately severe breach. It was on this basis that OFSI has published the details of this breach, albeit it did not impose a civil penalty nor propose a criminal prosecution. This is the first time that OFSI has used its new “disclosure” power in this way.<\/p>\n

The other noteworthy factor is that Wise\u2019s conduct was treated as \u201cmaking available\u201d assets to a designated person. Wise\u2019s role was passive \u2013 it took no step to transfer or give assets to the Designated Person. Nonetheless, the failure to block the debit card was interpreted as itself amounting to \u201cmaking available\u201d what should be frozen assets to a designated person. This is helpful in clarifying the breadth of the view taken by OFSI on what can amount to \u201cmaking available\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) has announced its most recent enforcement action, coupled with changes to its Guidance on its attitude to enforcement. On 29 June 2022 a new person was added to the UK\u2019s sanctions list as a \u201cDesignated Person\u201d. At 4am the next morning a debit card in that Designated … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “UK’s OFSI enforces and gives Wise words of compliance advice”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,71],"tags":[20,18,9],"ppma_author":[7],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-78","category-financial-services","tag-financial-sanctions","tag-russia","tag-united-kingdom"],"authors":[{"term_id":7,"user_id":656,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mhandley","display_name":"Mark Handley","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/09\/handleymark-100x100.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Handley","first_name":"Mark","job_title":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/markhandley.html","description":"Read Mark's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}