Partner Anna Bradshaw comments in the Global Investigations Review (GIR) on how the recent announcement of a £146,341 penalty imposed by the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) on a UK telecoms operator highlights potential flaws in the agency’s enforcement process and leaves businesses with limited opportunity to learn from any mistakes or understand how the agency interprets nebulous concepts such as ‘indirectly making available’. “The lack of detail about the circumstances of the breach, the points that were made in mitigation and what was considered relevant is very unhelpful,” she said, adding: “It’s deeply worrying that OFSI are cooking up findings of violations in effective secrecy because they don’t disclose enough about the circumstances of the breach to enable anyone to take a view on whether they were in the right or not.” She speculated that the company may have decided not to take its appeal further “given the costs of pursuing a legal challenge, and the publicity that Upper Tribunal proceedings would entail”, concluding that it did not provide her with comfort that OFSI correctly interpreted the law.
