JFSC and Government of Jersey on sanctions changes following Brexit
- Sanctions
Missed this event or want to watch it again?
On Wednesday 3 March at 14:00, our International and Industry Engagement Co-ordinator, Caroline Morgan will be joined by the Government of Jersey’s Head of International Compliance, Ministry for External Relations, Dan Marcos for a webinar on the recent legislative changes following Brexit.
On 1 January, as part of Brexit, the UK stopped implementing EU sanctions regulations and introduced new UK sanctions legislation made under its Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018.
To ensure that Jersey retains its alignment with the UK on sanctions, the Minister for External Relations has made the Sanctions and Asset-Freezing (Implementation of External Sanctions) (Jersey) Order 2021, which came into force on 12 February 2021.
The Jersey Order implements United Nations Security Council sanctions and autonomous UK sanctions by giving effect to the relevant UK legislation. Jersey no longer implements autonomous EU sanctions regimes, but continues to implement all UN, UK, and EU terrorist asset-freeze designations.
The webinar will cover:
- what has changed
- what remains unchanged
- what is required of Industry
During the session, we received a number of questions from attendees. While Caroline and Dan did answer some of these during the webinar, they have provided responses to a few they didn’t have time to answer.
Offences aimed in paragraph 2(3)(b) of Schedule 2 of the External Order
Schedule 1 to the Sanctions and Asset-Freezing (Implementation of External Sanctions) (Jersey) Order 2020 (the Order) provides the detail of the UK sanctions instruments implemented in Jersey. It is important to note that if a UK sanctions provision is listed in Column 5 of Schedule 1 to the Order, it is an offence in Jersey to contravene it.
To ensure all UK provisions listed in column 5 of Schedule 1 have legal effect as offences in Jersey, it was necessary to take account of differences in how certain UK provisions were drafted.
The vast majority of the UK provisions that create offences do so purely by reference to contravening another UK provision. For example, under the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (the DPRK Regulations) regulation 57(1) establishes what must not be done and regulation 57(4) creates an offence if the prohibited activity is undertaken:
57(1) A person must not provide financial services or funds for the purpose of trade with the DPRK and
57(4) A person who contravenes the prohibition in paragraph (1) commits an offence, ….
However, some of the UK provisions, for example regulation 72(6) of the DPRK Regulations, create direct offences:
72(6) It is an offence for a person to disclose information if the Secretary of State has notified …
Using the examples above:
As regulation 57(1) of the DPRK Regulations sets out a prohibited activity, column 5 of Schedule 1 refers to directly to it - essentially implementing regulation 57(4)
As regulation 72(6) does not actually prohibit an activity, paragraph 2(3)(b) of Schedule 2 to the Order has the effect of creating a prohibition from the act that constitutes the UK offence, in this case disclosing that information.
The impact of paragraph 2(3)(b) is that when Article 4(1)(a) of the Order makes it a Jersey offence to “contravene” regulation 72(6) of the DPRK Regulations (as a UK provision specified in column 5 of the table in Schedule 1 to the Order), that regulation is to be read as if it was a prohibition on disclosing the information.
Complexity of sanctions wording
By consolidating the legislation, significantly reducing the number of laws and orders, the Government of Jersey hopes that the sanctions legislative framework is now easier to understand.
However, internationally sanctions remains a complex area, which it is recognised can sometimes make it challenging, even for experienced practitioners, trying to understand and implement sanctions requirements.
Over the course of 2021, the government will be reviewing the Sanctions and Asset-Freezing (Jersey) Law 2019 and the Sanctions and Asset-Freezing (Implementation of External Sanctions) (Jersey) Order 2021. Where it is possible to make changes that might improve accessibility, these will be considered by the government who have advised that they welcome feedback from Industry on this.
The government is also working closely with the JFSC to maintain and develop the available guidance on sanctions. If there are specific areas of the legislation that you do not understand, or are finding difficult to understand, and would like additional or expanded guidance, please do feed this back to us at sanctions@gov.je and/or f.sanctions@jerseyfsc.je.
You can find a link to Jersey sanctions legislation and guidance on UK legislation on the Gov.uk website