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ENFORCEMENT INFORMATION FOR August 27, 2015
UBS AG Settles Potential Liability for Apparent Violations of the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations: UBS AG (UBS), a financial institution headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, has agreed to remit $1,700,100 to settle its potential civil liability for 222 apparent violations of § 594.201 of the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 594 (GTSR). From January 2008 to January 2013, UBS processed 222 transactions related to securities held in custody in the United States for or on behalf of an individual customer of UBS in Zurich, Switzerland (referred to hereafter as the "Client" ) designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in October 2001 pursuant to Executive Order 13224, "Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism."
OFAC has determined that although UBS identified all...
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1) While the causing of the export of custodial services was covered by Clearstream Banking S.A. (2014), the UBS AG case is the first in which a wider variety of "passive" services were considered distinct violations of the sanctions violations.
The receipt of dividends on U.S. securities and payments of management fees, for example, are activities which are normally not directly ordered by a client, but rather are performed on the basis of a single delegated authority.
3) The aggressive counting of discrete violations may have been owed in part to the footnote describing how UBS apparently refused to disclose the name of the client at issue.
4) The way in which the violations were counted in this action raises the possibly that, if motivated to, OFAC could or would count the accrual of...