Pacta sunt servanda.
Practice area · II
International sanctions, delisting and compliance strategy
A designation is not a conviction: it is an administrative measure that takes effect without a trial. A listing by the European Union, by the United Nations or by a national authority, an asset freeze, blocked transactions, a bank closing your accounts without explanation: sanctions strike immediately, often before any examination of the merits, and they also reach people who appear on no list at all. The firm addresses them through public international law and international human rights law, the ground on which their legality, their proportionality, respect for the rights of the defence and effective judicial review are decided. Delisting is won through evidence and the choice of forum, never by waiting alone.
Designation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the European Union or the United Nations; delisting requests, actions for annulment, petitions for reconsideration; asset freezes or banking blocks to be lifted as a matter of urgency; secondary sanctions and extraterritorial reach; overcompliance, banking exclusion and the debanking of non-designated persons; compliance, licences and exemptions in order to invest and operate lawfully: the characterisation of the measure, the applicable regime and the sequence of actions always come before the response.
Designation and asset freeze
Office of Foreign Assets Control, European Union, United Nations, United Kingdom
Delisting and judicial review
Action for annulment, petition for reconsideration, United Nations Ombudsperson
Compliance and overcompliance
Licences and exemptions, banking exclusion, secondary sanctions
A designation takes effect without a trial: the constraint comes before the judge. Delisting is won through evidence and the choice of forum, never by waiting alone.
Delisting strategy
Delisting is won through evidence and the choice of forum, never by waiting alone.
A designation is not a conviction: it is an administrative measure open to challenge.
Identify your situation
Designation, asset freeze, compliance: identify your situation
Six points of entry, from the designated person to the correspondent firm. The firm handles each in isolation, or several together under a single strategy.
A designated person or entity (OFAC, EU, UN)
You, or your company, appear on a list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the European Union, the United Nations or the United Kingdom. Objective: to reconstruct the file the authority keeps confidential and to pursue the removal route specific to the applicable regime, with no outcome guaranteed.
You are seeking delisting
A contestable designation must be withdrawn. Objective: to demonstrate misidentification, an insufficient factual basis, a change of circumstances or disproportion, and to bring that demonstration before the authority, the review body or the competent court, according to the regime.
An asset freeze or banking block to be lifted as a matter of urgency
Frozen accounts, refused transactions, imminent closure by your bank. Objective: to activate the Crisis Room, map the scope of the freeze, secure the indispensable licences and act without delay with the authorities and the financial institutions.
You are exposed to secondary sanctions or extraterritorial reach
A non-US operator exposed solely because of a relationship with a designated entity, or at risk of derivative designation. Objective: to analyse counterparties, structure transactions and preserve the freedom to act without crossing the threshold of exposure.
You are hit by overcompliance, de-risking or debanking
A bank blocks or closes your accounts out of excessive caution, although you are not designated. Objective: to demonstrate your compliance, document by document, bring unjustified overcompliance to an end and restore access to financial services.
Compliance, licences or exemptions before or during a transaction
You need to invest, finance or maintain lawful activities in an environment subject to sanctions. Objective: to map the exposure, obtain the relevant general or specific licences and structure the transaction in strict compliance with the applicable regime, never in circumvention of the measures.
Strategic diagnosis
Warning signs and aggravating factors
Certain indicators show that the situation no longer calls for ordinary handling, but for a crisis architecture. These signals are not sufficient to characterise the case in law; they warrant a rapid, confidential and structured mapping.
Warning signs
- Unusual border check, provisional arrest or denied boarding.
- Visa refusal, suspension of a travel document or unexplained restriction on mobility.
- A bank or compliance intermediary alluding to an alert without producing it.
- Foreign criminal proceedings that are old, opaque or suddenly reactivated.
- A national arrest warrant relayed internationally.
- No public notice, yet concrete effects begin to appear.
Aggravating factors
- Overlap between several sanctions regimes.
- Exposure to secondary sanctions or to the 50 % rule.
- Banking overcompliance based on a perception of risk rather than on a clear prohibition.
- Private compliance databases propagating outdated or inaccurate information.
- An urgent transaction carried out without prior mapping of the applicable regimes.
Mistakes to avoid
- Treating the absence of a designation as the absence of risk.
- Attempting to circumvent a measure instead of seeking a licence, an exemption or lawful structuring.
- Responding to the bank without a documented evidentiary file.
- Confusing an OFAC petition, an EU action and the United Nations mechanisms.
- Waiting for removal from the list without addressing the derived effects.
Situation 1 · Designation and asset freeze
Designation and asset freezes: how the constraint takes hold
A listing decided without adversarial debate or access to the evidence: an administrative measure that freezes assets and prohibits transactions, before any examination of the merits.
The listing
An authority places a person or an entity on a list: the annexes to the regulations of the Council of the European Union, the lists of the UN Security Council, the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or the lists of the United Kingdom. The decision is often taken without any prior adversarial debate and on the basis of material that the person concerned has never seen. In law, it is an administrative measure, not a criminal conviction.
The effects, immediate and far-reaching
A freeze on all assets within the jurisdiction concerned, a prohibition on any operator entering into a business relationship, account closures, refused transactions, profound damage to reputation. Under the 50 % rule, an entity owned 50 % or more by a designated person is itself treated as blocked, without appearing by name on the list. Secondary sanctions further expose non-US operators solely because they deal with a designated entity: a national measure thereby produces effects across the world.
The most active area of application
The European Union's restrictive measures relating to Russia offer the densest illustration: since 2014, an exceptional volume of designated persons and entities, on broad criteria, including that of leading businesspersons operating in significant economic sectors, and a substantial body of annulment litigation before the General Court of the European Union. Many of these listings are annulled where the factual basis is insufficient, where the facts relied upon are out of date, or where the alleged link has ceased. The firm acts in this field without confining itself to it: the same pattern is found across every designation regime.
A designation freezes a situation. Removal reopens access to the financial system; addressing the derived effects restores the freedom to operate.
Situation 2 · Delisting and judicial review
Delisting and judicial review
Each regime has its own route: an action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union, a petition before OFAC, the United Nations Ombudsperson. The Kadi case law safeguards the rights of the defence.
Delisting in the European Union
A restrictive measure of the European Union is challenged by an action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union, on the basis of Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and, where appropriate, by a delisting request to the Council at the time of its periodic review. The Kadi case law of the Court of Justice enshrines, in the field of sanctions, the right to an adequate statement of reasons, respect for the rights of the defence and the right to effective judicial review. Proportionality review lies at its heart.
Removal before the Office of Foreign Assets Control
In the United States, removal from the Specially Designated Nationals List is sought by a petition for reconsideration, governed by 31 C.F.R. § 501.807, which must demonstrate misidentification, the absence or insufficiency of the factual basis, or a change of circumstances warranting delisting. The procedure is administrative and distinct from the European avenues: it follows its own rules, time limits and evidentiary requirements. No outcome can be guaranteed.
The United Nations mechanisms and the United Nations Ombudsperson
Under the Security Council's 1267 regime, concerning ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida, delisting is pursued through the Office of the United Nations Ombudsperson, which examines removal requests. For the other Security Council regimes, the route is the Focal Point for De-listing. The Ombudsperson is confined to that one regime; it does not extend to the other United Nations lists. In the United Kingdom, administrative review, followed by court review, operates in conjunction with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation.
Each regime has its own avenue of recourse: an action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union, a petition before the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the United Nations Ombudsperson. To confuse the forums is to lose time that the measure turns to its advantage.
Situation 3 · Secondary sanctions and extraterritoriality
Secondary sanctions and extraterritoriality
The 50 % rule, derivative designation, the worldwide effect of a national measure: preserving the freedom to act without crossing the threshold of exposure.
Secondary sanctions
Secondary sanctions target non-US persons solely because they deal with sanctioned entities. They extend the extraterritorial reach of sanctions and expose third parties, themselves not designated, to the risk of designation. For an operator established outside the United States, a business relationship that is perfectly legitimate under its national law can thus become a source of exposure. The issue is not merely defensive: the aim is to preserve the freedom to act without crossing the threshold of exposure.
The 50 % rule and derivative designation
Under the 50 % rule, an entity owned 50 % or more by one or more designated persons is treated as blocked, even though it does not appear by name on the list. This rule propagates the effects of the sanction along ownership chains and can reach entities that nothing explicitly designates. The analysis of ownership structures and beneficial owners then becomes decisive in characterising a counterparty's real exposure.
The worldwide effect of a national measure
A measure enacted by a single jurisdiction produces, through the operation of secondary sanctions, effects far beyond its borders. Banks, insurers and intermediaries, anxious to preserve their access to the markets concerned, apply the strictest constraints to the whole of their operations. Extraterritorial reach does not flow from the text alone: it also stems from the prudential behaviour of private actors, which multiplies the effect of the measure.
A national measure, through secondary sanctions and the 50 % rule, becomes a worldwide constraint. Mapping counterparties and ownership chains comes before any decision.
Situation 4 · Overcompliance and de-risking
Overcompliance, de-risking and debanking
A bank closes your accounts although no regime designates you: a commercial decision, not a legal obligation, which can be contested and reversed.
Overcompliance and banking exclusion
Beyond designated persons, banks block or close, out of excessive caution, the accounts of clients merely perceived as risky, on account of their geographical origin, their sector or an indirect relationship. This overcompliance is not always required by the applicable law: it often stems from a commercial decision to reduce risk, known as de-risking, which can be contested and, in certain configurations, corrected by a documented demonstration of compliance. It extends the effects of sanctions far beyond their scope.
Debanking and its chain effects
The closure of an account is never an isolated event: it spreads. Exclusion by one institution feeds the distrust of the others, through the operation of private compliance databases and shared screening tools. The person or the business is progressively deprived of access to financial services, without any judicial decision on the merits, and sometimes without any authority ever having designated them. Debanking then strikes a person, a family, a business and its partners.
Misidentification and derived lists
An erroneous match between a person and a list entry, propagated by private compliance databases, is difficult to correct once it has circulated. The effects persist in screening tools and archives long after formal removal from the official list. The response is therefore not confined to the measure at its source: it addresses its extensions, through representations to institutions, database providers and authorities, until the derived databases have been effectively purged.
Overcompliance is not always a legal obligation: it often stems from a commercial decision to reduce risk, which can be contested and, in certain configurations, corrected by a documented demonstration of compliance.
Situation 5 · Compliance, licences and exemptions
Investing and operating under sanctions, without exposure
Mapping the exposure, securing operations through licences and exemptions, preventing designation: the lawful conduct of transactions and investments, never circumvention.
Mapping the exposure
Operating in an environment subject to sanctions requires identifying the applicable regimes, the counterparties at risk, the ownership chains in light of the 50 % rule and the points of exposure to secondary sanctions. This mapping conditions every subsequent decision: without it, each transaction becomes a gamble. It is the prerequisite for the lawful conduct of business and for any structuring.
Investing and operating lawfully, through licences and exemptions
Investing, financing or continuing activities under sanctions remains possible in strict compliance with the applicable regime: reliance on exemptions, the obtaining of licences, and the compliant structuring of transactions and flows. A licence, which authorises a transaction that would otherwise be prohibited, may be general, where it covers a category of transactions, or specific, where it must be applied for and substantiated before the competent authority. Compliance, properly conducted, opens up room for manoeuvre rather than closing it off. The firm advises on lawful conduct, never on the circumvention of measures.
Preventing designation and reading the geoeconomic trajectory
Where a risk of listing can be identified, a preventive approach, built on analysis, documentation and representations to the authority, can reduce that risk or prepare an immediate challenge, without any result being guaranteed. Beyond compliance, the firm informs decision-making: mapping the regimes and their probable trajectory, weighing the risks, sequencing transactions, anticipating regulatory developments. Expert adviser and strategist as much as advocate.
Compliance, properly conducted, is not an obstacle: it opens up room for manoeuvre. Investing and operating under sanctions remains possible, in strict compliance with the applicable regime, never through circumvention.
Patterns of constraint
Recurring configurations of coercion
Not isolated accidents, but systemic patterns, capable of producing disproportionate effects before any examination of the merits.
Sanctions as a geoeconomic weapon
A designation used to drive a competitor out of a market, weaken an economic actor or exert pressure in a power struggle, under the cover of a foreign policy objective. The formal measure conceals a purpose foreign to its stated object.
Overcompliance and banking exclusion
The blocking or closure of the accounts of non-designated persons, by way of risk reduction and without any legal obligation, extending the effects of sanctions beyond their scope. De-risking turns commercial caution into lasting exclusion.
Designation by association
A listing based on a family, professional or ownership link, or on the 50 % rule, without any demonstration of conduct attributable to the person concerned. The sanction spreads along chains of ownership and relationship.
Misidentification and namesakes
An erroneous match between a person and a list entry, subsequently propagated by private compliance databases and difficult to correct once it has circulated. The error outlives its rectification at the source.
Persistence and derived lists
Effects that persist in compliance databases, screening tools and archives long after formal removal from the official list. Removal does not, by itself, purge the derived effects.
Overlapping regimes
Simultaneous or successive designation by several authorities, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the European Union, the United Nations, the United Kingdom, each with its own avenues of recourse, multiplying the complexity and the cost of the defence.
What the firm puts into practice
The method
A unified sequence, from mapping the exposure to delisting, unblocking and prevention, conducted case by case under a single strategy.
01
Mapping the scope and the regimes
Identification of the authorities concerned, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the European Union, the United Nations, the United Kingdom, of the exact scope of the freeze, of the ownership chains in light of the 50 % rule and of the points of exposure to secondary sanctions.
02
Building the evidential file
Reconstruction of the file the authority keeps confidential, gathering of the documents demonstrating error, factual insufficiency, a change of circumstances or disproportion, and documentation of the real context of the measure. The evidence is built before the challenge is brought.
03
Challenge and delisting request
Petition for reconsideration before the Office of Foreign Assets Control (31 C.F.R. § 501.807); action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union (Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) and delisting request to the Council; referral to the Office of the United Nations Ombudsperson under the 1267 regime.
04
Licences and unblocking
Applications for general or specific licences for indispensable transactions, and the unblocking of frozen assets and accounts, in coordination with the competent authorities and the financial institutions, handled as a priority by the Crisis Room where the risk warrants it.
05
Action against banking overcompliance
Representation before institutions that block or close the accounts of non-designated persons, through a documented demonstration of compliance, in order to bring unjustified overcompliance to an end and restore access to financial services.
06
Prevention, follow-up and information environment
Prevention of a designation or a re-designation, purging of derived databases, controlled management of media exposure and sustained coordination with authorities, banks and local counsel, until the situation is fully restored.
Expert work and strategy
Expert reports, opinions and overall strategy
Beyond the defence engagement, an expert architect's offering across sanctions regimes, their avenues of recourse and international human rights law.
An offering distinct from the defence engagement
The firm can act without necessarily being lead counsel, in support of a firm already instructed, a legal department, a company or an institution, where the case demands a simultaneous reading of public international law, human rights law, European litigation on restrictive measures, the mechanisms of the Office of Foreign Assets Control and United Nations sanctions that some teams lack in-house.
Deliverables
Actions for annulment and delisting requests at European Union level, petitions before the Office of Foreign Assets Control, licence applications, memoranda on the legality and proportionality of a restrictive measure, analyses of exposure to secondary sanctions and to the 50 % rule, and expert opinions for judicial or arbitral proceedings.
Recipients
This work may be intended for a targeted person or company, an executive, a legal department, a public or sovereign entity, a domestic or foreign correspondent firm, a crisis management agency, an institution or a court.
The firm's value does not lie in promising an outcome: it lies in mastering the regimes, their avenues of recourse and the case law governing their review, and in addressing together, case after case, the designation, the freeze and their derived effects.
Effects obtained or sought
Anonymised results and effects sought
The firm does not publish named case studies. The confidentiality of engagements is a non-negotiable condition. The results below are presented by category of effects obtained or sought in sanctions, delisting and compliance cases.
Removal of designations
Cases leading to the removal of a listing, before the competent authority, the review body or the court according to the regime: misidentification, insufficient factual basis, change of circumstances, disproportion. No outcome is guaranteed in advance.
Unblocking of assets and accounts
Lifting of freezes and blocks, restoration of access to accounts and transactions, including by obtaining licences for indispensable needs, in coordination with the authorities and the financial institutions.
General and specific licences obtained
Licences permitting otherwise prohibited transactions to proceed, whether legal fees, ordinary expenses or specified transactions, in strict compliance with the applicable regime.
Action against banking exclusion
Restoration of banking relationships closed or blocked on grounds of overcompliance, through a documented demonstration of compliance, for non-designated persons affected by de-risking.
Managing secondary sanctions
Analysis of counterparties and structuring of transactions to preserve the freedom to act of a non-US operator without crossing the threshold of extraterritorial exposure.
Preventing a designation
Preventive steps taken early that reduced the risk of listing, or prepared an immediate challenge in the event of designation, without any result being guaranteed.
Strategic advice and compliant structuring
Mapping of the regimes and their trajectory, sequencing of transactions and lawful structuring of investments in an environment subject to sanctions, never the circumvention of measures.
Cases resolved without public exposure
Negotiation, institutional correspondence and confidential representations averting escalation into litigation or the media, through to the purging of derived databases.
A selection of configurations handled
By category and without any identifying element. They illustrate the nature of the cases, not their outcome, and constitute neither a promise nor a guarantee of results.
The legal framework relied upon
Regimes, judicial review and rights of the defence
The regimes, remedies, UN mechanisms and scholarship on which the firm's practice rests. Primary sources only.
01
Regimes and legal bases
European Union: Council regulations and decisions and their annexes, restrictive measures relating to Russia (the "leading businesspersons" criterion); United States: Office of Foreign Assets Control, Specially Designated Nationals list (SDN list), 50 % rule, secondary sanctions, general and specific licences; United Nations: Security Council and sanctions regimes; United Kingdom: Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation. Sources: OFAC · Department of the Treasury; EU · EU Sanctions Map.
02
Judicial review and rights of the defence
Action for annulment before the General Court of the European Union (Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union); petition for reconsideration before the Office of Foreign Assets Control (31 C.F.R. § 501.807); right to property, rights of the defence and right to be heard, right to effective judicial review and to an adequate statement of reasons, proportionality; Kadi judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
03
UN and review mechanisms
UN Security Council; Office of the Ombudsperson for the 1267 regime (ISIL/Da'esh and Al-Qaida) and Focal Point for delisting under the other regimes; periodic review and delisting request to the Council of the European Union; in the United Kingdom, administrative review followed by judicial review, in coordination with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation. Sources: UN · Security Council, sanctions.
04
Scholarship and sources
General Comment No. 8 of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, on the relationship between economic sanctions and respect for economic, social and cultural rights; case law of the General Court of the European Union on restrictive measures; UN scholarship on the legality and proportionality of sanctions. References specific to each case file are verified before being relied upon in proceedings.
OFAC · Department of the TreasuryEU · EU Sanctions MapUN · Security Council, sanctions
Under sanctions, timing and scope decide everything. A designation challenged early, on a reconstructed and documented case file, is fought from a position of strength; taken up late, after the freeze, overcompliance and the scattering of fronts, the same situation is negotiated from a position of weakness. Command of the regimes, of their specific remedies and of the reviewing case law is proven case after case. The initial mapping determines the outcome.
Frequently asked questions
Delisting, freezes, compliance: the essentials
Preparing the first contact
Useful documents for an initial analysis
There is no need to send a complete file at the first contact. Certain elements make it possible to characterise the situation quickly.
- Identity document or certificate of incorporation
- Notification of designation or listing, where applicable
- Reasons and documents communicated by the authority
- Bank statements, notifications of account blocking or closure
- Ownership structure (shareholding, beneficial owners)
- Sanctions regimes concerned (OFAC, European Union, United Nations, United Kingdom)
- Blocked transactions or operations
- Evidence of the political, economic or personal context
- Press articles, reports, relevant international decisions
- Names of local counsel already instructed
- Known critical deadlines (review, hearings)
- Reputational or media exposure
The purpose of the first exchange is to assess the urgency and the relevance of an intervention. It does not, in itself, constitute a full opinion on the prospects of success.
Modes of intervention
Six ways of engaging the firm
For the targeted individual or business, for counsel already instructed, for judicial or arbitral proceedings, preventively, or for the referring firm outsourcing an area of expertise.
01
Direct advice and representation
Full engagement for the targeted individual or business: strategic advice, exposure mapping, remedies and delisting requests, licences and unblocking, action against overcompliance, lawful structuring of operations and investments, prevention.
02
Co-counsel and strategic reinforcement
Alongside counsel already instructed, in France or abroad: expertise in sanctions regimes and management of the international dimensions of the case file, without displacing lead counsel, who retains the conduct of the local defence.
03
Expert support for referring firms
Opinions and expertise in proceedings (delisting before the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the European Union, licences, compliance), consultations and preparation of case files as confidential support, with attribution and the client relationship remaining with the referring firm.
04
Expert witness and professional opinion
Expert opinion on the legality and proportionality of a restrictive measure, the available remedies, the Kadi case law, the mechanisms of the Office of Foreign Assets Control or of the United Nations, for judicial or arbitral proceedings, with oral testimony available.
05
Targeted engagement on a strategic front
Taking charge of a specific front within a strategy coordinated by other counsel: action for annulment, petition before the Office of Foreign Assets Control, referral to the UN Ombudsperson, the licensing strand, the banking and overcompliance strand, with reporting to coordinating counsel.
06
Monitoring, anticipation and prevention
Preventive arrangements for an exposed individual, executive or business: exposure mapping, monitoring of designation signals, compliant structuring ahead of a foreseeable listing and a compliance architecture put in place before escalation.
Contact by profile
Find the right point of entry
Depending on your profile, an initial confidential orientation discussion, without mutual commitment.
Exposed individuals
Designation, frozen accounts, debanking, refused transactions targeting an individual.
Companies and executives
Sanctions exposure, secondary sanctions, blocked transactions, compliance and licences.
States and sovereign entities
Sanctioned public entities, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, diplomatic dimension.
Political figures and former leaders
Politically motivated designation, asset freeze, reputational harm.
Lawyers, correspondents and crisis agencies
Sanctions aspect of a case file, co-counsel, confidential expert support and expert opinion.
Families and representatives of a targeted individual
Designated relative, frozen family assets, blocked access to banking.
Related practice areas
Continue within the firm's ecosystem
Sanctions defence dovetails with INTERPOL and extradition, lawfare, investigations, business and immunities. Related Praxis resources and Corpus entries.
A designation is not a conviction: it is an administrative measure open to challenge. Delisting is won on the evidence and in the right forum, never by waiting alone.
A designation, an asset freeze, a bank closing your accounts? Let us talk.
Exposed individual, executive, business, sovereign entity, political figure, family of a targeted person or correspondent firm: from the moment you make contact, the firm examines the situation as a matter of priority and may arrange an initial confidential orientation discussion to assess the critical deadlines and identify the relevant options. The initial discussion entails no mutual commitment. In French, English and Spanish.