IEEPA / OFAC Sanctions Violations Defenses

Sanctions defenses are built from dates and documents. A charge under 50 U.S.C. § 1705 depends on a prohibition that existed in a particular form at a particular moment, on conduct said to have violated it, and on proof that the defendant acted willfully. Each of those can be tested against a record, and in most cases the record was created by people who were not thinking about a prosecution when they made it.

The defenses set out below are the ones that recur. None of them is a slogan. Each requires assembling material from the client, from the government’s production, and often from a financial institution or a counterparty that holds the only contemporaneous version of what happened.

This page is general information about defending sanctions cases and not advice about a specific matter. To discuss a sanctions investigation or charge, call (888) 437-7747.

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Attacking Willfulness

Willfulness carries most of these cases. The government has to link the defendant to an understanding that the conduct was unlawful, not merely to the transaction, and it usually proves that circumstantially: through compliance training records, screening alerts, internal escalations, message language, and the involvement of intermediaries.

Counsel reads the same material differently. Training that covered sanctions in general terms is weak proof that a person understood a specific restriction. An alert generated by a system is not proof that any person read it. An escalation answered by a compliance function cuts against knowledge rather than for it. Guidance that was ambiguous, recently changed, or published in a form the person would never encounter is a genuine obstacle to the government’s theory rather than a technicality.

What Was Actually in Force on the Date

The prohibition is not written into the criminal provision. It comes from a license, order, regulation or prohibition issued under the Act, and those change. A restriction may have been narrower on the date of the conduct than it is now, a party may have been listed after the transaction rather than before, and a general authorization may have been in effect and later withdrawn.

Reconstructing that history is defense work, and it is frequently work the government has not done with the same care. The question is never what the rules say today. It is what they said on each of the dates in the charging document, and the answer has to be established document by document.

Authorizations, Exemptions, and Pending Applications

Where an authorization existed, the dispute becomes one of scope rather than of existence. Authorizations have conditions, effective periods and amendment histories, and conduct that fell partly inside one is a materially different case from conduct with no authorization at all.

Applications matter even where they were not granted. A pending request shows that the party identified the issue and asked, which is difficult to reconcile with a theory of knowing disregard. So does an inconsistent answer from the licensing agency, or a request left unanswered while the underlying transaction was time-sensitive. Counsel establishes what was submitted, when, and what came back, then places that sequence against the conduct charged.

Attribution, Statements, and the Government’s Exhibits

Sanctions decisions inside a company pass through screening systems, compliance staff, relationship managers and operations. Charging documents compress that into a single actor. Separating the people again, and establishing who decided what on what information, frequently undoes a theory that requires one individual to have held the entire picture.

The ordinary evidentiary fights apply as well. Interviews conducted inside a company by counsel the company retained raise questions about what the employee was told and who holds the privilege. Device and server images seized in these cases contain far more than the transactions at issue, so the scope of the warrant and the protocol used to review the image are open to challenge. Translated communications require proof of accuracy. Summary exhibits that reduce an enormous transaction record to a single chart are only as reliable as the selection decisions behind them, and those decisions are examinable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is not knowing the rules a defense?

Not by itself, but the statute requires willfulness, which is more than carelessness. A person who did not understand that a particular restriction applied is contesting an element rather than pleading ignorance in the loose sense. Whether the belief was genuine is established from the record: what guidance existed and in what form, what the person was told, and how the same issue was handled on earlier occasions.

The counterparty was not restricted when we dealt with them.

That is a documentary question with a documentary answer, and it is often decisive. Listing dates, the form the restriction took, and the point at which screening systems would have reflected it can all be established. Where the restriction post-dates the conduct, the government is left arguing a different theory, such as ownership or control, which carries its own proof problems.

Does an approval from compliance help?

Considerably. An approval from the function whose task was to answer the sanctions question makes it much harder to argue that an employee knowingly disregarded a restriction. Counsel establishes who gave it, on what information, and whether the person charged saw it before acting. The approval is not a formal defense, but it is strong evidence on the element that decides most cases.

What if the transaction was humanitarian or personal in nature?

The programs contain authorizations and exemptions of various kinds, and whether one covered the conduct is a question of scope that has to be worked out against the text in force at the time. A benign purpose is not enough on its own. Counsel identifies the authorization relied on, its conditions, and whether the transaction as executed stayed inside them.

Can I rely on advice I was given?

Advice from counsel can bear on willfulness, but relying on it has consequences, including a likely waiver of privilege over that advice and the communications around it. It is a decision to make deliberately and with a clear view of what will become discoverable, not a position to raise casually late in a case.

The government has an enormous spreadsheet of transactions. How is that answered?

By going behind it. Summary exhibits depend on selection criteria, on the reliability of the underlying data, and on assumptions about attribution that are often unstated. Counsel obtains the source material and the method, tests a sample against it, and litigates admissibility where the chart carries assumptions the evidence does not support.

Should I talk to investigators to explain the context?

Not without counsel. Sanctions questions are technical and turn on dates, list status and the scope of authorizations, and an answer given from memory can be wrong in a way that creates a separate problem regardless of the underlying conduct. Ask for contact details, say that counsel will respond, and stop there.

Working With Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C.

Sanctions defenses are assembled from the licensing record, the screening record and the internal correspondence, and they are usually strongest on the element the government finds hardest to prove. The work is establishing what was in force, what was authorized, and what a particular person actually knew.

Mr. Sris, Owner and Founder of Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C., is a former prosecutor and is admitted in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and New York. The firm has been practicing since 1997. Mr. Sris and the firm’s Of Counsel attorneys handle criminal defense matters across those jurisdictions, which matters in federal practice because a single investigation frequently reaches conduct, witnesses, and records in more than one state. Mr. Sris brings a background in accounting and information systems from George Mason University, applied to complex financial and technology-related cases.

The firm serves Northern Virginia from 1655 Fort Myer Dr, Suite 700, Room 719, Arlington, VA 22209 and central Virginia from 7400 Beaufont Springs Drive, Suite 300, Room 395, Richmond, VA 23225. By appointment. Call (888) 437-7747 to schedule. Request a consultation. Reach our location at (888) 437-7747.

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This page provides general information about defenses to sanctions charges under 50 U.S.C. § 1705 and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Case results depend on a variety of factors unique to each case. Results may vary.

Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

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These defences apply to one offence. Our page on ieepa ofac sanctions violations charges sets out that offence from start to finish.