<\/p>\n
Bank of Scotland has been fined \u00a3160,000 by the UK\u2019s sanctions watchdog after opening a bank account and processing payments for an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, who became the first person to be prosecuted for circumventing UK sanctions<\/a> last year, made 24 payments totalling \u00a377,383 to or from a personal current account during February 2023.<\/p>\n The Russian, who the UK government has included on its sanctions list<\/a>, held senior positions in Russian government such as being the former governor of Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea.<\/p>\n On 21 November 2017, the European Union made Ovsiannikov a designated person under its sanctions legislation<\/a>, saying that his work had compromised or threatened the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.<\/p>\n This restricted him from entering or accessing funds in member states including the UK, then still an EU member. He was subsequently added to the UK\u2019s list once the country left the bloc.<\/p>\n The EU annulled Ovsiannikov\u2019s designation in 2022 but he has remained on the UK list.<\/p>\n On 4 August 2022, he made an online application from Turkey for a UK passport, having travelled from Russia to Turkey three days earlier, the court heard during his criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n In the banking case, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) found that Ovsiannikov opened an account at Halifax, part of Bank of Scotland, on 6 February 2023, using his UK passport that contained a spelling variation of his name that differed from those on the sanctions list<\/a>.<\/p>\n This meant the account was not flagged as a potential match by the bank\u2019s automatic sanctions screening system.<\/p>\n The account remained unrestricted until 24 February 2023 when the bank identified him as a designated person as part of a politically exposed person screening.<\/p>\n