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A surge in economic sanctions and a tangled web of international blacklists are overwhelming in-house compliance staffs and lifting the ledgers of third-party compliance services. Fines issued by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces U.S. sanctions, issued about $1.29 billion in penalties against 22 companies in 2019, compared with $71.5 million against seven companies in 2018.
“Unlike other regulatory regimes like anti-money-laundering, there isn’t necessarily a one-two-three list of steps of what you have to do,” said Amber Vitale, managing director at FTI Consulting, who was a section chief in enforcement at OFAC between 2011 and 2013. “It’s basically like, ‘These are the things that you may not do.’ And you’re left to your own devices for the most part to figure out how to make sure that you don’t do those things that are prohibited.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/surge-in-sanctions-lifts-compliance-services-11583444176
