SANCTIONS
If 2022 was about getting “match fit”, with Western allies throwing as much “spaghetti at the wall in terms of sanctions”, 2023 is about playing the match at full fitness, according to Tom Keatinge, the founding director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “We need to identify where evasion is happening and make the net … as small as possible. You’re not going to catch everything. But now the [holes in the net are] quite big, and we need to tighten it.” “The past 12 months have been a steep learning curve for many countries and industry sectors that did not really understand what sanctions were when the war started, says Mr Keatinge. “But the banks were on it from day one,” he says. “They have no excuses. They should know what to do.”
