OFAC to target ‘facilitators and third-country providers’

In the coming weeks and months, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (‘OFAC’) will ‘increase its focus on countering sanctions evasion, including by targeting facilitators and third-country providers that may wittingly or unwittingly help Russia replenish the supplies and material it desperately needs to support its military.’

So said OFAC, in a brief ‘read-out’ of a roundtable discussion between Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Wally Adeyemo, and ‘a group of [unnamed] sanctions and US foreign policy experts’, 10 February.

The read-out said that over the past year, ‘The international coalition imposing economic restrictions on Russia has focused on twin goals: disrupting Russia’s military supply chains and degrading their battlefield ability and denying the Kremlin the revenue it needs to fund its war.’

It said that Deputy Secretary Adeyemo had ‘shared the progress seen on these fronts, including ballooning deficits and long-term economic damage, as well as the difficulty the Kremlin faces in replacing its major losses of military equipment and supplies,’ noting,

‘The strain on Russia’s military in particular can be seen clearly through the Kremlin’s increasingly desperate attempts to backfill through third parties in permissive jurisdictions, or even turning to international pariahs like Iran and North Korea for UAVs and other weapons.’