UK fines Irish Apple outpost over sanctions-busting payments to Russian dev The UK government has fined an Apple subsidiary £390,000 for breaching sanctions on Russia after it sent more than £600,000 to a developer linked to a designated entity. The penalty, issued by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), targets Apple Distribution International (ADI), the iGiant's Irish arm …
So the total development cost was £990,000. Still a rounding error.
UK government should stop being complacent when it comes to big corporations.
If sanctions are meant to be serious, then breach should carry serious consequences.
How about £100 million fine and some custodial sentences?
It was self reported. I could see really sticking to them if they were going out of their way to hide it, but self reporting is what you want since the regulators can't watch everything every company is doing at all times. If you make the fines outrageously large for the damage incurred then companies will never self report, destroy evidence, etc.
That the part I don't understand. Because banks have lots automated checks to prevent payments being made where there is even suspicion of money laundering or forbidden entities involvement.
The entity lists used are transnational and very broad. I'm aware of lots of false positives, requiring further investigation, but have known no false negative that's been subsequently caught.
Yeah would of helped, but the actual reading was this
"ADI, a non-UK person, instructed a UK based bank to make two payments (one in June 2022 and another in July 2022) totalling £635,618.75 to Okko LLC (“Okko”), a company wholly owned at the time of the payments (and in the case of the July payment also at the time of payment instruction) by the designated person JSC New Opportunities (UKSL ref RUS1489). ADI did not cancel these instructions, leading to the subsequent release of funds to Okko. This conduct, in particular the failure to cancel (an omission), amounted to conduct in the UK by ADI.
It is totally illegal to try to impose economic sanctions on civilian commerce. The individuals who earned the money, in this case a Russian, are having their rights violated by the arbitrary economic sanctions. No country can legally violate the rights of any individuals, and economic sanctions amount to civilian starvation siege warfare.
OK, so a) the Geneva Conventions concern only protected non-combatants in war so your title doesn't make sense. b) economic sanctions only ever apply to civilian commerce. c) protected human rights include dignity, life, freedom of expression, and assembly, not making money.
I do think the sanctions should fall on the UK banks who processed the payment instead/as well as the corporation initiating it.
I also wonder what will happen in future if Ireland (or Spain or another EU country) sanctions some country or entity which the UK thinks is fine.
I understand the aim and need for economic sanctions in certain situations, but the whole process sounds so damned sloppy and bureaucratically-arbitrary.
In articles about these sanctions, I see the phrases "linked to" and "associated with". What's the standard of proof? What's the procedure for unique identification?
Invoking sanctions against a Russian named, for example, "Anatoly Sergeyev" is like invoking sanctions against an Englishman named "William Smith" -- there are metric ass-tonnes of people with those names.
