The Government are announcing today that they will create a new unit—the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation—within the Department for Business and Trade to improve the implementation and enforcement of trade sanctions.
Over the last year, the Government have implemented sanctions against Russia unprecedented in scale and scope. In total, the UK has sanctioned over £20 billion-worth of its 2021 trade in goods with Russia. We have also banned the provision of a range of professional and business services that are crucial to Russia’s economy, including accounting and audit, advertising and public relations, architectural services, engineering services, management and IT consulting, and legal advisory services. The UK is a world leader in services trade, and Russia has high levels of dependence on skills and expertise from G7 countries. Our services sanctions will degrade Russia’s ability to maintain, upgrade and modernise its economy over the medium term, thereby reducing the revenue available to finance its war machine.
The new Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation will play a pivotal role in ensuring that these sanctions, but also those across 23 other UK sanctions regimes such as Afghanistan, Belarus, North Korea, Iran, Lebanon and Syria, are effectively implemented and enforced.
The new unit will support businesses to comply with UK trade sanctions as well as investigate potential breaches. The Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation will have a range of civil enforcement tools, including the ability to levy monetary penalties. The Government will make regulations to provide the framework for these monetary penalties. Where the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation investigates and potentially finds more serious breaches, it will refer these to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or other agencies for criminal enforcement.
The Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation will be an important addition to the Government’s sanctions enforcement capability. It will work closely with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which will continue to enforce trade sanctions where goods—and ancillary services—cross the border in line with its role as the UK’s customs authority; with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation in His Majesty’s Treasury, which is responsible for financial sanctions as well as the oil price cap; with the Department for Transport, which leads on transport sanctions, and with the Home Office, which is responsible for immigration sanctions and for modern slavery.
The creation of the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation is a key part of how Government are delivering the economic deterrence initiative announced as part of the refresh of the Government’s integrated review, published in March this year. This funding is from the conflict, stability and security fund, and administered by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which is responsible for overall foreign policy on the use of sanctions. It will strengthen our tools to respond to and deter hostile acts by current and future aggressors, including by building expertise across Government to design, implement and enforce sanctions for maximum impact.
Further detail on when the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation will be operational will be shared with Parliament at a later date.
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