Want to know how you can ensure to be in compliance with OFAC sanctions for uninterrupted global business operations? Watch the video below to understand the importance of complying with OFAC sanctions for global business and financial transactions.
Key Takeaway:
To navigate the complex landscape of international sanctions, it's crucial for everyone engaged in global business, banking, or financial transactions to know that they are not dealing with sanctioned countries or entities. Failing to comply with OFAC sanctions can lead to severe consequences, including large fines, being cut off from the global financial system, and even jail time! ThreatSTOP are sanctions experts who can begin protecting your business by preventing violations in as little as 15 minutes.
Protect your business today with ThreatSTOP - the one-stop shop for OFAC sanctions compliance.
For more information and guidance on OFAC sanctions compliance, contact us today.
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Video Transcript
0:00 Intro
0:14 Who Must Comply With Sanctions?
Hi there, this is Francis Turner from ThreatSTOP. I'm a security researcher involved in our sanctions compliance and sanctions-related activities.
0:14 Who Must Comply With Sanctions?
One of the questions that we've been asked a lot is who must comply with OFAC or other EU etc. sanctions, and the basic answer to that is anyone who wants to do business, use the U.S. banking system, or the EU's banking system pretty much has to comply with these sanctions.
Now, you get a certain amount of leeway for doing things by mistake and so on, but you really, really don't want to be cut out of the U.S. banking system. You do not want to be removed from Swift. You do not want to discover that your bank says, oh, and by the way, we no longer wish to have you as a customer because we consider you to be a person who's doing business with sanction entities, and therefore, we will be in a whole heap of trouble with the SEC if we let you continue to do banking with us.
So that's basically who must comply. It's effectively everybody because everybody, at some point, if you're trading with the EU or the U.S. or your resident, your company is resident in the EU or the U.S. or has an EU or U.S. bank, you will have to comply with OFAC sanctions. That's putting it bluntly is effectively everybody is the way it works out.
And it's interesting you can discover this, I mean, the best way to do it is to to comply in advance to make sure you're not. If you don't, as I say, the embarrassing thing is that you get told by your bank, hey, by the way, we don't want to have you as a customer anymore, and being debanked in today's world where everything's going about electronic transfers, and you know, you've got wire transfers, and you know, electronic banking, all this kind of thing. If you're debanked, you are in a whole heap of trouble because you cannot do business. You won't be able to have a credit card, a corporate credit card, you can't pay for things, people can't pay you, which is probably also important.
It's extremely unpleasant to discover that you're debanked, that your financial institution doesn't want to do business with you, and part of the other problem with that is once one financial institution decides they don't want to do business with you, no other financial institution decides they want to do business with you because they will ask you legitimately who were you doing business with? Who was your banker before? You will say it was whichever bank, and they will then contact whichever bank, say why did you decide to stop having them as your banking customer, and they will say because they were a PHP violating OFAC sanctions, and at which point, your new potential bank will say, and we don't want to use a customer either.
So, to put it simply, everybody in the world needs to pay attention to OFAC sanctions because if you don't pay attention to it, you may be cut out of the Global Financial system, and that is fundamentally an existence-ending event at this time because you literally cannot do business anywhere if you don't have a bank account.