UK looking at ways to speed up sanctions against Russian oligarchs
Ministers are understood to be examining ways of speeding up the sanctions process, amid fears that targeting the government’s full hitlist of more than 100 Russian oligarchs could take as long as six months, because of legal hurdles.
The government has come under intense pressure in recent days over the pace at which it is taking action against individuals with links to the Kremlin, despite the prime minister’s promise last week to “squeeze Russia from the global economy, piece by piece”.
There is widespread internal frustration that preparatory work for legal cases against a number of individuals has only just now begun, after months of warning about a Russian invasion.
“It’s a big cross-Whitehall process between the Home Office and the Foreign Office – which should have started months ago – and it’s exposing the system’s weaknesses,” one Whitehall source said. “The government is weeks behind where it should be.”
Whitehall insiders claim that the Sanctions Act of 2018, passed after Brexit, makes the procedure legally cumbersome, with overstretched government lawyers now facing a vast caseload.
They said the Foreign Office was likely to announce the names of more sanctioned individuals “very soon” and would then continue to work painstakingly through a much longer list of figures.
The levelling-up secretary, Michael Gove, is understood to be considering plans to toughen up the government’s powers, so that sanctioned oligarchs’ properties could be seized without compensation – rather than just frozen.
One suggestion is that such properties could then be used to house Ukrainian refugees.
Johnson’s official spokesperson rejected the idea that the government was acting too slowly, suggesting that measures targeting banks and other
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