Sanctions circumvention via private-law instruments: Ukrainian courts and legislative reform

Yuliana Naidon, Serhii Naumiuk, Kyrylo Horyslavskiy, Oleh Peliukh and Roman Chernysh

Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2026, vol. 29, issue 2-3, 111-125

Abstract: PurposeThis paper aims to analyse how, in 2018–2025, Ukrainian civil and commercial courts have been used to detect and neutralise sanctions circumvention schemes that are disguised as ordinary private-law transactions in the wartime context.Design/methodology/approachThis study used doctrinal analysis of Ukrainian legislation and sanction-related court decisions (2018–2025), purposive sampling and coding by evasion/circumvention pathway, followed by triangulation against official anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) and export-control guidance and relevant EU/US policy documents.FindingsBased on seven court disputes (2018–2025), this paper identifies recurring sanctions-circumvention typologies implemented through private-law instruments (registry manipulation/beneficial-ownership concealment, asset transfers, procedural substitution, claim assignment and award-based debt collection). The courts’ reasoning consistently turns on continuity of control, temporal proximity between designation and the transaction and opacity/artificiality of the restructuring. Supreme Court practice on recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards shows heightened scrutiny where the economic beneficiary may be a sanctioned entity.Research limitations/implicationsResearch limitations include jurisdiction-specific evidence; replication in EU implementing jurisdictions is recommended.Practical implicationsPractical implications include transaction-level risk indicators for banks, corporates and investigators; policy options to align civil-law remedies with AML/CFT and export-control objectives.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to derive a sanctions-circumvention taxonomy for Ukraine directly from court practice and to translate that case law into a structured set of transaction-level risk indicators and policy options for aligning civil-law remedies with sanctions, AML/CFT and export-control objectives.

Keywords: Sanctions circumvention; AML/CFT compliance; Export controls; Beneficial ownership; Civil and commercial courts; Private-law instruments; Ukraine; Wartime context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jmlcpp:jmlc-11-2025-0205

DOI: 10.1108/JMLC-11-2025-0205

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