This was done to reduce government penalties for breaching UK sanctions, the report said, adding that companies could face warnings or civil penalties, as well as criminal prosecution.
Stacy Keen, financial crime partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, noted that the breadth of the sanctions has become a big test for UK business, the newspaper reported.
"The Russian sanction packages have been felt more keenly outside of Russia in a heightened way that others just haven’t in the past. Russian individuals and entities had a footprint outside of Russia that perhaps if you look at the Iranian regime or the Syrian regime — there just wasn’t those interlinks between the economies," Keen was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
The United Kingdom has imposed sanctions against more than 1,600 individuals and companies since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the report read.