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The European Parliament endorses that the evasion of sanctions is considered a crime throughout the EU

The European Parliament endorses that the evasion of sanctions is considered a crime throughout the EU

BRUSSELS, July 7 () –

The plenary session of the European Parliament has given its approval this Thursday that the violation of sanctions is a crime prosecuted throughout the European Union, a change that the European Commission has requested as a preliminary step to be able to have a sufficient legal basis that allows legislating later on the confiscation of assets seized from Russian oligarchs complicit in the invasion of Ukraine.

With 509 votes in favour, 58 against and 19 abstentions, the MEPs meeting in Strasbourg (France) thus support the changes that will allow those who evade sanctions to be prosecuted as a cross-border crime and will make it easier for them to be punished in all the Member States, with the objective that those sanctioned seek refuge in the less restrictive EU countries.

Once the Council also gives its green light, the Community Executive will be able to work on a precise directive that defines harmonized criteria to classify the crime and provides for minimum sanctions throughout the EU; and that it will again need the approval of the European co-legislators.

Brussels estimates that each year organized crime moves some 139,000 million euros in the common space, but barely 2% is frozen and only 1% is confiscated; and this despite the fact that there is a directive on recovery and confiscation that allows action in this regard.

The revision of the rule will allow the identification, location and freezing of assets generated by criminal activities to be harmonized and streamlined before the authors manage to divert these funds or hide their criminal origin.


Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Member States have reported the freezing of assets worth 9,890 million euros due to the five rounds of sanctions agreed upon by the Twenty-seven, including real estate, works of art or yachts. .

However, only in some of the member states would the legal framework allow these properties to be confiscated if it is established that the owners have violated the sanctions, while in others, such as Spain, breaching the restrictive measures imposed by the EU is hardly an administrative fault.

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