{"id":865,"date":"2025-02-28T08:43:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/?p=865"},"modified":"2025-02-28T13:56:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T17:56:26","slug":"united-kingdom-hmrc-has-opened-65-trade-sanctions-investigations-since-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/2025\/02\/28\/united-kingdom-hmrc-has-opened-65-trade-sanctions-investigations-since-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"United Kingdom &#8211; HMRC has opened 65 trade sanctions investigations since 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In a letter written from the UK&#8217;s HMRC (the body with primary responsibility for the criminal enforcement of trade sanctions) to Parliament&#8217;s Treasury Select Committee, HMRC has provided significant information on its recent enforcement efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td>  <strong>Year<\/strong><\/td><td><strong>Number of investigations<\/strong> <strong>opened<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>  2021<\/td><td>0<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>  2022<\/td><td>14 (all relating to Russian sanctions)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>  2023<\/td><td>22 (20 relating to Russian sanctions)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>  2024<\/td><td>29 (27 relating to Russian sanctions)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Of those 65 investigations, HMRC has confirmed that 30 remain live of which 27 relate to Russian sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The letter tabulates the six fines imposed to date for breaches of the Russian sanctions, and in relation to the largest single fine of \u00a31,000,000 imposed in August 2023 (see <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/2023\/08\/22\/uk-imposes-1m-fine-for-exports-to-russia\/\">our earlier post<\/a>), the letter notes that this fine relates to &#8220;brokering and technical assistance&#8221; and not to an actual export.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HMRC&#8217;s letter also states that a previously published compound penalty of \u00a31,000 from September 2023 (see <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/2023\/12\/01\/uk-hmrc-imposes-three-compound-penalties-for-exports\/\">our earlier post<\/a>) was actually for a breach of the UK&#8217;s Iran sanctions despite being described at the time as &#8220;relating to the attempted export of Dual Use goods&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HMRC&#8217;s letter also states that in October 2024 it referred a case for possible prosecution to the Crown Prosecution Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a letter written from the UK&#8217;s HMRC (the body with primary responsibility for the criminal enforcement of trade sanctions) to Parliament&#8217;s Treasury Select Committee, HMRC has provided significant information on its recent enforcement efforts. Year Number of investigations opened 2021 0 2022 14 (all relating to Russian sanctions) 2023 22 (20 relating to Russian &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/2025\/02\/28\/united-kingdom-hmrc-has-opened-65-trade-sanctions-investigations-since-2022\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;United Kingdom &#8211; HMRC has opened 65 trade sanctions investigations since 2022&#8221;<\/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":[78,95,2],"tags":[13,14,12,43,18,34,9],"ppma_author":[7],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-78","category-95","category-general","tag-dual-use-goods","tag-export-controls","tag-fine","tag-iran","tag-russia","tag-trade-sanctions","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","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","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=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/europeansanctionsenforcement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}