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Bankers, attorneys and other professionals in the EU who help blacklisted Russian oligarchs evade sanctions would face a higher risk of prosecution under a plan pitched by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch.

The plan, which officials unveiled Wednesday amid concerns that the EU’s unprecedented embargo against Russia has suffered from weak and uneven enforcement, would classify sanctions-busting as a “serious” cross-border offense alongside human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering and terrorism, thus strengthening the bloc’s ability to permanently seize assets from blacklisted oligarchs and the western professionals who knowingly serve them.

“We are targeting both those that benefit from violating [European] Union restrictive measures, but also those that facilitate it,” EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday. “This will mean that the oligarch … and their associated lawyers [and] bankers will be within the scope of the offense.”

All EU countries except Slovakia and Estonia have already criminalized sanctions evasion, but the crime’s legal definition and the penalties triggered by violations vary between jurisdictions.

EU national law enforcement agencies tend not to view sanctions evasion as a high priority, and the typically cross-border nature of the offense makes any investigation they do open difficult to advance. As a result, individuals who route prohibited transactions around the EU’s commercial and financial restrictions are rarely held to account, officials said Wednesday.

Wednesday’s plan would prod more EU nations to open investigations, trace assets tied to designated parties and share data on suspected violations with other nations, officials said Wednesday.

If the plan comes into force, efforts to seize the proceeds of sanctions evasion and any “instrumentalities” used to commit the crime would also stand a greater chance of success throughout the EU.

George Voloshin, head of Aperio Intelligence’s branch in Paris, told ACAMS moneylaundering.com that the plan could enable more seizures of properties that blacklisted Russians control through shell companies, on the basis that using legal entities to hide those links amounts to sanctions evasion.

“But this is more about harmonization than anything else,” he said.

Once the European Council, which represents the 27 national governments of the EU, agrees to add sanctions evasion to the bloc’s list of serious crimes, the European Commission will direct them to adopt a common definition of the offense and a uniform list of potential penalties.

Cartel crackdown

A separate 45-page draft asset recovery directive also published Wednesday would require each EU nation to establish an asset recovery office, a task that several of the bloc’s members—including Ireland, Malta, France, Denmark and Estonia—have already completed.

The planned directive would require nations to ensure those offices help trace the assets of EU-blacklisted parties and empower them to unilaterally freeze suspicious funds for up to seven days while a court decides on whether to restrain them for longer.

With the directive, EU officials hope to deprive increasingly violent transnational criminal gangs of more of their money and property, they said.

The directive includes a list of 32 minimum standards for EU countries to implement, one of which would empower national law enforcement agencies to restrain the assets of suspected criminals without first having to obtain a conviction. The measure would only apply in a limited set of circumstances, such as the death or disappearance of a defendant.

Investigators could also seize any asset of a value “disproportionate to the lawful income of the owner” if they manage to persuade a judge that the property derived from criminal activity.

“It’s a new tool to go after the … highest bosses in these multinational organized criminal groups,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told journalists Wednesday.

Johansson singled out the U.S.-blacklisted Irish Kinahan cartel as a potential target of the new measures.

Contact Koos Couvée at kcouvee@acams.org