{"id":32854,"date":"2025-04-10T10:37:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T08:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcrime.it\/?p=32854"},"modified":"2025-04-10T13:34:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T11:34:21","slug":"kleptotrace-final-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcrime.it\/en\/kleptotrace-final-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Persistent Sanctions Evasion: Increasingly Transnational Schemes Often Involving Unwitting Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"
KLEPTOTRACE Final Conference – Press Release<\/span><\/h5>\n
\n

Authorities from 27 European countries met at Europol HQ to discuss the results of KLEPTOTRACE, an EU co-funded project coordinated by Transcrime-Universit\u00e0 Cattolica<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Hague, 10 April 2025 <\/strong>– Sophisticated evasion schemes, weak compliance protocols, and jurisdictional loopholes keep eroding the effectiveness of European Union sanctions \u2013 and international ones \u2013 including those targeting Russian oligarchs as a consequence of the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Today, the first systematic research on sanction evasion schemes was presented at Europol Headquarters at The Hague (the Netherlands), during the final conference of the EU co-funded <\/strong>KLEPTOTRACE project<\/strong><\/a>. <\/strong>The event, organised by Transcrime – Joint Research Centre on Innovation and Crime of the Universit\u00e0 Cattolica del Sacro Cuore \u2013 with the support of Europol, brought together law enforcement agencies, financial intelligence units, asset recovery offices, anti-corruption and competition authorities from 27 European countries, to discuss the state of play in sanctions enforcement and present data-driven tools and recommendations for investigating cases of sanction violation and high-level corruption.<\/p>\n

Sanctions have become a key foreign policy instrument for the EU to safeguard democracy and human rights, and have been widely employed to target the supporters of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; however, violations are frequent despite new European rules which entered into force in 2024 to harmonise criminal offences and penalties for the violation of restrictive measures.<\/p>\n

The KLEPTOTRACE project has produced the first systematic mapping of corporate assets linked to sanctioned \u2018oligarchs\u2019<\/strong>, the first comprehensive analysis<\/strong><\/a> of recurrent sanction evasion schemes<\/strong> and an in-depth study<\/strong><\/a> of<\/strong> transnational \u2018kleptocracy\u2019 schemes<\/strong>. The findings underline the need to improve asset tracing and the international cooperation to enforce sanctions.<\/p>\n

\n

Mapping of companies linked to sanctioned \u2018oligarchs\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

KLEPTOTRACE has mapped the companies in the EU that on 31 December 2021, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, belonged to the 342 individuals and entities that were then targeted by sanctions and restrictive measures (within the EU sanctions list or the US OFAC list):<\/p>\n