When the UK introduced civil monetary penalties for financial sanctions breaches in 2017, penalties were rare and investigations stretched across years. The dominant compliance question was whether the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) would act at all. That question has been answered. OFSI now resolves cases through negotiation, and on 19 March 2026 it concluded its first settlement. Yet the most revealing feature of that case is not the penalty imposed. It

A federal jury in Boston has convicted Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, a 43-year-old dual US-Iranian national from Natick, Massachusetts, of conspiring to export sophisticated American microelectronics to Iran in breach of US sanctions. Following a 14-day trial, Sadeghi was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), together with two substantive counts under

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has for the first time publicly named a company accepting a compound settlement for breaching Russia sanctions, marking a material shift in the transparency of UK strategic export enforcement. Petrofac Facilities Management Limited (PFML) paid £569,157 to settle breaches committed in 2022 and 2023, when the firm supplied sanctioned industrial goods to individuals connected to Russia and provided related technical assistance while windi

A UK-registered company now sits on the US sanctions list. Cucumber Sweet Waves Ltd is among nine entities blocked by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in a coordinated action against the fuel-smuggling network of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), issued alongside a supplemental Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Alert on the laundering typologies that sustain it. For UK institutions, the British nexus is the immediate point of exposure: any coun

The United States Department of the Treasury (Treasury) has expanded its campaign against the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization (Prince Group TCO), with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designating nine individuals and 26 entities, while the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) moved to extend an existing special measure to capture an alleged successor entity. The OFAC designations, made under Executive Order 13581 as amended, target Prince

When a sanctions screening platform is configured to test every name against well over a thousand watchlists, it is rarely described as a failure of compliance. It is described as thoroughness. The instinct runs deep across the financial system: more lists mean more coverage, more coverage means less risk, and less risk means a defensible position. Yet on 11 June 2026 the Court of Justice of the European Union exposed the flaw in that instinct, and it did so through the small

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has unsealed a five-count complaint against Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, 38, of San Diego, charging him with terrorism, sanctions evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and false statement offences linked to the diversion of purportedly charitable donations to Hamas. Sabassi was arrested in San Diego and presented before a US magistrate judge in the Southern District of California. According to the complaint, Sabassi solicited donations from in or a

The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of HM Treasury, has imposed a monetary penalty of £1,000,920.59 on Sabre Global Technologies Limited (SGTL), a UK travel technology provider. The figure represents the largest penalty OFSI has issued in relation to the Russia sanctions regime since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and — of greater interest to compliance teams — the first penalty OFSI has issued for a circumvention offence. The underlying conduct is in

The phrase ‘voluntary self-disclosure’ (VSD) carries a reassuring implication: that a firm has chosen, freely and without compulsion, to report its own misconduct. The term suggests agency and integrity. Regulators in the US and the UK have built entire enforcement frameworks around this concept, offering penalty reductions, declinations and reputational credit to firms that come forward before they are found out. Yet across sanctions, export controls and anti-bribery enforce

The guilty plea of Avtandil Kalandadze offers a useful case study in how dark fleet sanctions evasion converges with terrorist financing exposure, deceptive shipping practices and active obstruction of enforcement. Kalandadze, 47, a Georgian national and former master of the tanker Bella 1, has pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to failing to heave to a US Coast Guard cutter. The plea follows a multi-week pursuit from the Caribbean Sea across

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has decided to fine Carlos Ricardo Fuenmayor, Chief Executive of BancTrust, £99,600 for failing to disclose three separate matters that bear directly on his fitness and propriety. The provisional findings are notable for what they reveal about the gaps a determined non-disclosure can open in a regulator's view of an approved person. Until December 2021, Mr Fuenmayor did not tell the FCA — including in application forms submitted on behalf

The arrest of Jamshid Ghomi exposes a procurement and laundering architecture that should be familiar to anyone running sanctions controls, even as its scale and end-users mark it out. Ghomi, a dual US-Iranian national and chief executive of Tehran-based Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co Ltd (FPR), was detained on 3 June 2026 on a federal complaint alleging conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The conduct described runs the full evasion playboo