On 26 February 2022, the United States and its allies announced they would remove selected Russian banks from the SWIFT global financial messaging network. Exclusion from SWIFT has been described as ‘the nuclear option’ of financial sanctions, and will have far-reaching consequences for the global economy and trade. Read more...
On 23 February 2022 the Government first announced new sanctions to be imposed on Russian individuals, organisations and banks in response to Russia’s recent aggression against Ukraine, with further sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This Flagpost discusses existing sanctions which were imposed on Russia in 2014 in response to the Russian Government’s annexation of Crimea and explains how the Government will give effect to the recently announced sanctions (as at 28 February 2022). Australia’s sanctions laws Australia implements two types of sanctions: sanctions imposed as a consequence of Australia’s membership of the United Nations (imp... Read more...
On 24 November 2021, the Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries (Senator Duniam), at the request of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne), introduced the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Thematic Sanctions) Bill 2021 (the Bill) into the Senate. While the power of the Foreign Minister to make a decision to impose sanctions under Australia’s sanctions laws is very broad, stakeholders have raised concerns that the current autonomous sanctions regime is not sufficient for targeting, deterring and punishing human rights violations and have advocated for the Government to introduce legislation which focuses on human rights abuses. In its report titled Criminality, corrupti... Read more...
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