Breaching an international sanction is a criminal offence in the Netherlands. The Sanctiewet 1977 (Sanctions Act 1977) and the ministerial sanction regulations made under it declare the prohibitions of EU and UN sanctions binding, and the Wet op de economische delicten (Economic Offences Act) turns a breach into an economic offence. Committed intentionally, it is a misdrijf carrying up to six years imprisonment, a fine of the fifth category and confiscation of the goods and the profit; companies are liable in their own right under article 51 of the Criminal Code, and those who effectively directed the conduct can be prosecuted alongside them. Sanctions cases are investigated by the FIOD, the Douane (Customs Administration) and the police, and prosecuted by the Functioneel Parket, the specialised branch of the Public Prosecution Service.
This article deals with the criminal side of sanctions enforcement: which rules create liability, who investigates, when a company or a director is exposed, what conduct is actually being prosecuted, and what the pending new Dutch sanctions legislation and the EU criminalisation directive will change. For the commercial and compliance perspective, see our article on what businesses must know about doing business with Russia, Iran and China, and for the wider picture our complete guide to international and domestic penal measures.
Which rules make a sanctions breach a criminal offence
EU sanctions are laid down in Council regulations. A regulation is directly applicable in every member state, so a Dutch company is bound by an asset freeze or an export ban from the day the regulation enters into force, without any Dutch act of transposition. What EU law leaves to the member states is the penalty. That is where the Sanctiewet 1977 comes in: it empowers the minister to designate, by ministerial regulation, the international sanction rules that must be complied with, and a breach of a rule so designated is an economic offence under the Economic Offences Act. The same construction is used for UN sanctions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which reach the Netherlands through EU regulations.
The penalties follow the Economic Offences Act rather than the ordinary Criminal Code. A sanctions breach committed intentionally is a misdrijf punishable by up to six years imprisonment, community service or a fine of the fifth category. Committed without intent it is an overtreding with a substantially lower maximum. Because the amounts of the fine categories are adjusted periodically by the legislature, the figure that matters in practice is not the statutory maximum but the additional measures: a court may order confiscation of the goods, order the disgorgement of unlawfully obtained gains under the Criminal Code, and impose the specific economic sanctions of the Economic Offences Act, including a total or partial shutdown of the business for a fixed period. The background to this regime is set out in our note on economic criminal law.
Who investigates and who prosecutes a sanctions case
Criminal sanctions enforcement in the Netherlands is concentrated rather than scattered. The Functioneel Parket, the branch of the Public Prosecution Service that handles economic, financial and environmental crime, decides on prosecution. The investigation is normally carried out by the FIOD, the fiscal and economic investigation service, working with the Douane and, where goods are involved, with the Customs team that specialises in precursors, strategic goods and sanctions legislation. The police and the Koninklijke Marechaussee become involved at ports, airports and borders.
Alongside criminal enforcement runs an administrative track. Financial institutions, trust offices and crypto service providers are supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank and the Autoriteit Financiele Markten, which check whether they screen their clients and transactions against the sanctions lists, freeze what must be frozen and report to the supervisor. Those obligations flow from the supervisory regulation made under the Sanctiewet 1977 and from financial supervision law; the trust sector has its own regime, described in our article on the Dutch Trust Offices Supervision Act. A supervisor that finds a serious breach may impose an administrative measure or refer the matter for prosecution, and the una via principle prevents a person from being punished twice for the same conduct through both tracks. On the administrative side the ordinary instruments of the General Administrative Law Act apply, including the penalty payment order.
Coordination between all of these bodies has been the weak point. The Netherlands appointed a national coordinator for sanctions compliance and enforcement in 2022, after the scale of the Russia packages made clear that information about frozen assets, company structures and shipments was sitting in separate systems. The recommendations that followed are the direct source of the legislative reform described below.
When is the company liable, and when is the director
Article 51 of the Criminal Code makes legal persons punishable for offences committed in the course of their business, and allows the Public Prosecution Service to prosecute the company, those who gave the order for the conduct, and those who effectively directed it, either together or separately. In sanctions cases this matters because the conduct is rarely a single act by a single person: it is an export licence application, a change of route, a payment instruction and a shipping document, each handled by someone different. Conduct is attributed to the company where it fits reasonably within its sphere of activity, for instance because it was performed by staff, because the company had power to determine whether it happened, and because it accepted it or failed to take the care that could reasonably be expected.
Personal liability for effectively directing the conduct requires that the person knew of the prohibited conduct, or at least consciously accepted the significant chance that it was taking place, and that the person had the power and the duty to prevent it but did not. That is a demanding test, and it is also the reason why documented refusals matter: a compliance officer or director who raised the issue in writing and was overruled is in a very different position from one who signed off without asking. Intent in this field includes conditional intent, so deliberately not asking an obvious question about an end user or a routing does not protect anyone.
What conduct is actually prosecuted
Four patterns account for most Dutch sanctions prosecutions. The first is the export of listed or dual-use goods to a sanctioned destination through an intermediate country, with paperwork that names a harmless end user. The second is the supply of prohibited services, which since the later Russia packages covers a wide range of professional, IT and consultancy work as well as transport and insurance. The third is dealing with money or economic resources belonging to a listed person, including making them available indirectly. The fourth is circumvention: constructions whose object or effect is to defeat a prohibition, which is itself an offence even where each individual step looks lawful.
One technical point causes more trouble than any other. An asset freeze catches not only the listed person but also entities that person owns or controls, and under the guidance applied in the European Union ownership is presumed where the listed person holds fifty per cent or more of the shares or voting rights. Control can exist below that level, on the basis of factors such as the power to appoint the board. This is not the same as the twenty-five per cent threshold used to identify an ultimate beneficial owner under anti-money laundering law, and treating the UBO threshold as the sanctions test is a recurring and expensive mistake. If your counterparty is half-owned by a listed person, the freeze applies whatever the UBO register says.
Sanctions offences also travel with other offences. Payments that pass through a structure designed to conceal the involvement of a listed person are money laundering under articles 420bis to 420quater of the Criminal Code, which carries its own heavy penalties and is often the easier charge to prove; our guide to money laundering sets out that regime. False end user statements and altered shipping documents bring forgery into play. Because the evidence and the counterparties usually sit abroad, the investigation is run through mutual legal assistance and European Investigation Orders, as explained in our article on cross-border criminal investigations and, where a person is wanted by another state, in our note on extradition cases.
The EU criminalisation directive and the new Dutch sanctions act
Until 2024 each member state decided for itself what a sanctions breach was worth. Directive (EU) 2024/1226 of 24 April 2024 changed that by defining a common set of criminal offences for the violation and circumvention of Union restrictive measures and by prescribing minimum maximum penalties, including imprisonment for the more serious forms and, for legal persons, fines that member states must be able to set by reference to turnover. The Directive also requires member states to criminalise inciting, aiding and attempting these offences and to provide for freezing and confiscation of the proceeds.
The Dutch response is the Wet internationale sanctiemaatregelen (International Sanctions Measures Act), a bill submitted to the House of Representatives on 19 February 2026 which largely repeals the Sanctiewet 1977 and puts a modern framework in its place. It is intended to add a full administrative enforcement track next to the existing criminal one, to create a central reporting point for sanctions signals, to give agencies a clear legal basis for exchanging information, and to extend supervision to further professional groups. The bill has been through the Council of State and the parliamentary written round and is at the stage of plenary debate; it has not been adopted and is not in force. Until it enters into force, the Sanctiewet 1977 together with the Economic Offences Act remains the operative framework, and nothing about your current obligations changes on the strength of a pending bill.
Two points from the parliamentary debate are worth watching for anyone with real exposure. The first is the level of the administrative fine, which parliament has questioned as insufficiently deterrent for large companies and which may end up linked to turnover in order to satisfy the Directive. The second is the extension of supervision to advocaten, notaries and accountants, which touches professional confidentiality and is being scrutinised for that reason.
What happens if you become a suspect
A sanctions investigation usually announces itself with a search or a seizure rather than with a letter. The FIOD arrives with a warrant from the rechter-commissaris, servers and phones are imaged, and bank accounts are frozen under criminal law in addition to any freeze that already applies under the sanctions regulation itself. From that moment you are a suspect with the right to remain silent and the right to be assisted by an advocaat, and the practical decision is not whether to cooperate but what you are obliged to hand over. Administrative supervision brings a duty to cooperate; a criminal investigation does not, and the boundary between the two tracks is where cases are won and lost. Our overview of the Dutch criminal justice system explains the general course of proceedings.
Sanctions cases are slow because the evidence has to be gathered abroad, which is why they so often begin with a series of pro forma hearings before the substantive trial. That delay is not neutral: it is the period in which the defence can ask the investigating judge to hear witnesses, to obtain the underlying licence correspondence, and to test the classification of the goods, which is very often the real issue in the case. A significant proportion of sanctions matters ends in a settlement with the Public Prosecution Service rather than a judgment, and where a settlement is reached with a company the published statement of facts becomes a document your counterparties and banks will read.
How to reduce the risk before it becomes a criminal matter
Sanctions compliance is not a screening exercise against a list of names. Start with the ownership and control question for every counterparty that has any connection with a sanctioned jurisdiction, and record how you answered it, including the date and the source, because the lists change constantly and you will be judged on what you knew at the time. Build the classification of your goods and services into the sales process rather than the shipping process, so that the question is asked before a commitment is made. Take the red flags seriously: a new intermediary in a neighbouring country, a customer who declines an end user statement, an unusual payment route, a request to split an order below a threshold.
Where something has gone wrong, act quickly and take advice before making any report. Self-reporting, freezing the situation and remedying the control failure are factors the Public Prosecution Service weighs, but a report drafted without legal advice can amount to a confession on behalf of the company and its directors at the same time. Keep the internal investigation privileged by having it directed by an advocaat, and separate the people who conduct it from the people whose conduct is under examination.
Frequently asked questions about the criminal enforcement of sanctions
What are the main challenges in the criminal enforcement of international sanctions?
The lack of a central international authority makes enforcement difficult. States must translate international sanctions into their national legislation themselves. The complexity of modern sanctions regimes hinders effective enforcement. Companies and individuals often find new ways to circumvent sanctions. Cross-border cooperation between countries does not always run smoothly. Different legal systems and procedures slow down enforcement. Gathering evidence for sanctions violations often proves to be a difficult task. Financial transactions sometimes pass through multiple countries, which makes detection even more complicated.
How is the effectiveness of criminal enforcement of international sanctions assessed?
The main focus is on the number of prosecutions and convictions. The amount of fines and prison sentences imposed is also taken into account. Experts assess whether sanctions produce the desired behaviour. Sometimes it takes years before you really notice any effect. Countries that amend their sanctions legislation score better. The Netherlands, for example, is modernising its 1977 Sanctions Act in order to be able to enforce it more strictly. International organisations monitor whether countries comply with their sanctions obligations. They publish reports on this.
How does international law influence national legislation on the enforcement of criminal sanctions?
International treaties and UN resolutions oblige countries to implement sanctions. States must amend their national legislation accordingly. EU sanctions regulations apply directly in all Member States. The Netherlands must automatically follow and enforce them within its own legal system. International law sets minimum standards for the enforcement of sanctions. Countries may take stricter measures, but not weaker ones. International legal principles such as legal certainty and proportionality influence how sanctions are enforced. Countries must respect these principles in their legislation.
What role do international organisations play in establishing and enforcing sanctions at the criminal law level?
The United Nations imposes most international sanctions through the Security Council. These sanctions apply to all member states. The European Union sometimes imposes sanctions on countries and individuals on its own initiative. EU Member States must enforce these sanctions under criminal law. International organisations offer technical assistance to countries to improve enforcement. They share information about sanctions violations between member states. The International Criminal Court can prosecute individuals for serious international crimes. This complements national criminal enforcement.
What are the consequences for states that do not comply with the criminal enforcement of international sanctions?
States that ignore their enforcement obligations may themselves become targets of sanctions. This can lead to economic and political isolation. International organisations may suspend or revoke a country’s membership. This means that the country loses influence and cooperation on the world stage. Other countries sometimes exert diplomatic pressure on states that do not comply with sanctions. This can seriously damage bilateral relations. Financial institutions become more cautious about transactions with countries that do not take sanctions enforcement seriously. This damages the country’s economic reputation.
How do criminal enforcement measures relate to the political and diplomatic reality on the international stage?
Political considerations often play a major role in the enforcement of sanctions. Sometimes countries choose not to enforce them strictly, simply to avoid damaging their diplomatic relations. Economic interests regularly clash with sanctions obligations. Companies lobby fiercely against strict enforcement if it affects their trade. Diplomatic negotiations often result in countries applying sanctions more flexibly. Countries are particularly likely to compromise when they fear that talks will otherwise break down. Sanctions only really work when countries act together. As soon as key players fail to comply with the agreements, criminal enforcement quickly loses its power.
How does the Netherlands enforce international sanctions in practice?
The Netherlands translates international sanctions into national rules through the Sanctions Act 1977, which forms the bridge between international agreements and Dutch enforcement, with specialised teams such as POSS of the Customs Service monitoring compliance.
What role does the United Nations play in imposing sanctions?
The UN Security Council may impose binding sanctions on all member states based on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which gives it the power to intervene in threats to peace and security, and all UN member states must implement these sanctions.
Why is enforcing international sanctions considered such a difficult task?
Enforcement bodies often struggle with vague terms and constant changes in regulations, and there is an ongoing tension between international obligations and the national rule of law, raising questions about the balance between effectiveness and justice.
Are sanctions only imposed at the international level?
No, sanctions regimes range from multilateral agreements to regional measures, and their implementation can depend on diplomatic pressure, international courts, treaty-based agreements, and bilateral cooperation.
How Law and More can help
Law and More advises and defends companies, directors and compliance officers in sanctions matters: investigations by the FIOD and the Douane, prosecutions by the Functioneel Parket, seizures and frozen accounts, ownership and control assessments, internal investigations, and negotiations with the Public Prosecution Service. We also act where a supervisor has started an administrative procedure and the criminal risk has to be managed at the same time. If your business has been contacted about a sanctions issue, or you have discovered a problem yourself, our criminal law team can assess your position confidentially and set out the options. You will find our contact details on our website.
