OFSI has published its annual review for the year to March 2020. The review highlights:
- OFSI’s work to prepare for the end of the transition period;
- its work on reported breaches and how it decides on the appropriate penalty – it says this is usually in the form of private warning letters and directing companies to its guidance. In the past year, though, it imposed 3 monetary penalties, which it must publish, including of course the first fine for provision of economic resources (on a non-bank), and the large fine on Standard Chartered Bank for its breaches of the Ukraine regime;
- that OFSI received 140 reports of potential breaches with a value of £982m. More breaches related to the Libyan regime than to others, but this is not surprising, given that most frozen assets in the UK are held under that regime;
- over the year, there were 495 changes to the consolidated list, with 2127 designated persons by the end of the period; and
- 40 new licences were issued, and 69 amended during the year.