Sanctions Evasion In Central Asia

The countries of Central Asia and other members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a tool to circumvent sanctions against the Russian Federation, its legal entities and individuals

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After the begin­ning of the large-scale aggres­sion of the Russian Federation (RF) against Ukraine, a num­ber of demo­c­ra­t­ic states, imposed sanc­tions against Russia, its finan­cial insti­tu­tions, legal enti­ties and individuals. 

The pur­pose of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions is to make it dif­fi­cult for Russia to finance the war in Ukraine and deprive the Russian Federation of the abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue aggres­sion, as well as to demon­strate to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Russian polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic elite that the inva­sion of Ukraine has eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal con­se­quences. Sanctions have also been imposed on Belarus for sup­port­ing the Russian inva­sion. Individual sanc­tions are direct­ed against those respon­si­ble for sup­port­ing, financ­ing or car­ry­ing out actions that under­mine the ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, and inde­pen­dence of Ukraine, as well as those who ben­e­fit from these actions. After the intro­duc­tion of sanc­tions, the author­i­ties of the Russian Federation and Belarus, state and pri­vate com­pa­nies, as well as oli­garchs who fell under sanc­tions, began to use var­i­ous mech­a­nisms to cir­cum­vent sanc­tions. In the cur­rent sanc­tions’ envi­ron­ment, Russia still has enough room for free maneu­vers. There is a wide range of loop­holes for evad­ing sanc­tions. The Russian author­i­ties use part­ners of Russia – indi­vid­u­als, legal enti­ties, and the gov­ern­ments of the states — strate­gic part­ners of the Russian Federation who are not sanctioned.

Legal and con­sult­ing com­pa­nies in Russia, Central Asia and Western coun­tries offer ser­vices for the relo­ca­tion of busi­ness from Russia to the mem­ber states of the Eurasian https://www.opendemocracy.net Economic Union (EAEU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Russia. The Russian Federation con­trols the EAEU. The EAEU is a free trade bloc that has inter­na­tion­al trade treaties with Iran, Serbia, Singapore and Vietnam and nego­ti­ates with many oth­ers, most notably India and China. The CIS also includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This inter­state union func­tions some­what dif­fer­ent­ly than the EAEU, but it pro­vides for par­tial free trade between all mem­bers. For many goods that move to the CIS, there are no export and import duties.

The pur­pose of the ana­lyt­i­cal report is a com­pre­hen­sive study of the issues of cir­cum­ven­tion of sanc­tions by Russia with the help of the Central Asian states, legal enti­ties (orga­ni­za­tions) and indi­vid­u­als (cit­i­zens) of these coun­tries and the pre­sen­ta­tion to the world com­mu­ni­ty of rec­om­men­da­tions to improve the effec­tive­ness of sanc­tions and block the abil­i­ty of the Russian Federation to cir­cum­vent sanctions.

The ter­ri­to­r­i­al focus of the study is the states of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. This choice is deter­mined by the active use of these states to cir­cum­vent sanc­tions and the use of the same type of schemes by the Russian regime in this region. 

In cas­es where the mech­a­nism for cir­cum­vent­ing sanc­tions includes not only the states of Central Asia, but also oth­er coun­tries of the EAEU and the CIS, the authors of the report con­sid­er the entire range of par­tic­i­pat­ing states. The authors of the report believe that in the future it is nec­es­sary to study oth­er region­al groups of states in order to iden­ti­fy mech­a­nisms for cir­cum­vent­ing sanc­tions and block­ing these mechanisms. 

The report was pre­pared on the basis of infor­ma­tion from pub­licly avail­able open sources. 

When work­ing on the report, the authors used a sys­tem of meth­ods for mon­i­tor­ing pub­lic sources and qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive meth­ods for ana­lyz­ing infor­ma­tion. Wherever pos­si­ble, infor­ma­tion from one source has been ver­i­fied against oth­er sources.

Descriptions of sanc­tions against the Russian Federation, its legal enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als are pub­licly avail­able. For this rea­son, the authors do not describe them in detail in the present report.

The report cov­ers the peri­od from the begin­ning of the Russian aggres­sion in February 2022 to the end of December 2022.

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Обход западных санкций в странах Центральной Азии Скачать на русском языке PDF

The orig­i­nal source of arti­cle: FREEDOM FOR EURASIA