In the midst of the controversy over sanctions against Petro Poroshenko, the fifth president of Ukraine, the media found errors in the annexe to the relevant NSDC decision. The inaccuracies were quickly corrected. Yulia Kuznets, an attorney of Sanctions practice, told The Page how often this happens and what the consequences of inaccuracies in sanctions papers are.
In fact, mistakes in sanctions lists happen quite often, as they are drawn up “in times of crisis”. The main thing in this case is to have an effective and fast procedure for lifting such sanctions and making appropriate changes.
Some cases of sanctions against unrelated persons are publicized. One example of “technical” mistakes, according to the lawyer, is the so-called list of “thieves in law” against whom the NSDC imposed sanctions on May 14, 2021. It was about 557 “thieves in law” and 111 foreign criminal authorities.
The then Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, pointed out errors in the identification data of 108 people. They were corrected only in October 2021 by the NSDC’s decision and enactment by a decree of the President of Ukraine.
That is, we were moving in accordance with the legal procedure. However, it took about five months to correct the mistakes.
An example of the accidental application of sanctions is the case of a nurse from Bakhmut who, in March 2019, was “confused” because of the same name as a separatist who was the head of the election commission at the referendum in occupied Makiivka.
In the NSDC decision to impose sanctions, along with the name of the separatist, the date of birth and the RNOKPP of a nurse from Bakhmut was indicated. As a result of this mistake, the accounts of the person from Bakhmut were blocked, and no payments, including salary, were made. Only nine months later, the error was corrected.
