Sanctions Top-5 for the week ending 4 February 2022

Here are five things that happened this week in the world of economic sanctions that I think you should know about.

Sign up here if you would like to receive these summaries by email. Click here for an index of past Sanctions Top-5 briefings.

This week’s briefing covers the weeks ending 28 January and 4 February 2022.

  1. The EU Council published conclusions on the European security situation following a meeting of representatives of EU member states. The document promises “a wide array of sectoral and individual restrictive measures that would be adopted in coordination with partners” in response to “further military aggression by Russia against Ukraine.”

Comments

The EU and the UK have joined with the United States to present a united front in response to the developing situation on the Ukrainian border. While the recent EU and UK statements contain fewer details than legislation under consideration in the US Congress, the world powers appear to be on the same page rhetorically. This seems to represent a growing consensus that the threat of strong multilateral sanctions may be giving Russian military planners second thoughts about the costs of further incursions into Ukrainian territory (along with less kinetic actions such as cyberattacks and so on). My team at Steptoe has been busy analyzing the potential US, EU, and UK sanctions. You can read our blog posts about it here and here. (And check out our webinar coming up on 9 February 2022.)

The US government’s new Myanmar business advisory has a 26-word title that translates into “watch out!” Despite its wordiness, the advisory does not itself create any new restrictions on US persons transacting in Myanmar. The document is similar to advisories issued in relation to Hong Kong, Cambodia, and China’s Xinjiang Province last year. As a reminder, Myanmar is not subject to comprehensive sanctions, and many types of transactions are still permissible.

Did I miss something? Send me a message or comment on LinkedIn.

(The views expressed are my own and do not constitute legal advice. Photo from Vladislav Reshetnyak.)

--

--

US attorney in Hong Kong specializing in economic sanctions, financial crimes. Sign up for emails: http://eepurl.com/cVhTXf LinkedIn at: http://goo.gl/KX1jER

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Nicholas Turner

US attorney in Hong Kong specializing in economic sanctions, financial crimes. Sign up for emails: http://eepurl.com/cVhTXf LinkedIn at: http://goo.gl/KX1jER