The compliance gates for Ukraine projects under EU, UK, US and Swiss law

Gate 1: sanctions and export controls

The starting point is that doing business with Ukraine is not sanctioned. The sanctions regimes target Russia, Belarus (under Council Regulation (EC) No 765/2006, consolidated to 24 July 2026) and designated persons, and they apply territorial bans to Crimea, Sevastopol and other Ukrainian territories that are not under Ukrainian government control. A reconstruction project on government-controlled territory trips them through its counterparties, owners, suppliers, logistics and payment chains; a project that touches Crimea and Sevastopol or the non-government-controlled areas of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts meets the territorial bans on imports, exports and services in Regulation (EU) No 692/2014 and Regulation (EU) 2022/263 directly, whatever the counterparties look like.

Four regimes matter in practice, similar without being identical, and each binds only the persons and conduct within its reach. The EU framework rests principally on Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 (asset freezes on designated persons) and Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 (sectoral measures), both amended dozens of times; it binds conduct within the Union, EU nationals and EU-incorporated companies wherever they act, and any business done in whole or in part within the Union (Article 13 of Regulation 833/2014). The current consolidated texts on EUR-Lex are the working copy; the amending regulations in the Official Journal are the authority where a position turns on a recent change, and the Commission's sanctions overview tracks the packages.

The UK operates the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, which reach conduct in the UK and UK persons wherever they act (regulation 3); note that since 28 January 2026 the UK Sanctions List is the sole source of designations, OFSI's separate consolidated list having closed. The US regime centres on OFAC's SDN and related lists, with the long reach that dollar payments give it. Switzerland implements its measures through the Ordinance of 4 March 2022 on measures in connection with the situation in Ukraine (SR 946.231.176.72), administered principally by SECO, which substantially tracks the EU measures but on its own timetable and with its own differences.

Ukraine's own rules sit in the same gate. The Law of Ukraine on Sanctions lets the National Security and Defence Council designate persons by decision enacted by presidential decree, with consequences that include asset blocking and exclusion from public procurement, so a partner on Ukraine's own list is out of a state tender whatever the Western lists say; and the National Bank's currency restrictions under Board Resolution No. 18 of 24 February 2022, eased in stages under its published strategy, still decide which payments may leave the country, which matters to every repatriation clause in a project agreement.

Three practical consequences follow. First, screening the counterparty's name is not enough: the EU, UK and Swiss regimes reach entities owned or controlled by designated persons, and under OFAC's 50 Percent Rule an entity is blocked where blocked persons own, individually or in the aggregate, 50 per cent or more of it; control without such ownership does not itself make an entity blocked property under US law, though dealing with entities controlled by blocked persons carries its own designation risk. Either way, the ownership chain has to be established and screened, which in a Ukrainian or regional context means corporate-registry work beyond any database pass. Second, a multi-jurisdiction project must clear every applicable regime; a structure clean under Swiss law can still fail under OFAC because of a dollar payment leg.

Third, export controls run alongside sanctions: reconstruction goods can include dual-use items (communications equipment, drones, certain industrial hardware) that need licensing analysis regardless of how benign the end use is. The EU's regimes are mapped, with links to the consolidated acts, on the Sanctions Map, which describes itself as a finding aid; the UK, US and Swiss positions come from their own lists and legal texts, and every position must be confirmed against the current text: this is the fastest-moving area of law touching these projects.

Gate 2: the funders' own integrity regimes

Passing the sanctions gate gets a project to the second one, which applies its own tests: the funders run their own exclusion and integrity systems, some grounded in statute and all carried into the contracts.

The World Bank Group maintains its Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals: entities debarred for fraudulent, corrupt, collusive, coercive or obstructive practices, excluded from Bank-financed contracts for the listed period. The five major development banks cross-debar under their 2010 mutual-enforcement agreement: a public debarment of more than a year by one of them for fraud, corruption, collusion or coercion is enforced by the other four, so a problem with one MDB follows a company to every window, including the EBRD's ineligible entities system; both the World Bank and the EBRD can also list affiliates. Anyone bidding through MIGA, IFC, World Bank or EBRD channels should check these lists for their own group and their consortium partners before investing in a proposal.

The EU built integrity into the Ukraine Facility itself. Under Regulation (EU) 2024/792, disbursements rest on a framework agreement with Ukraine covering the prevention, detection and correction of irregularities, fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest, and an independent Audit Board assists the Commission in fighting mismanagement of Facility funds, in particular fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and irregularities (Article 36). Under the separate Support Loan Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2026/467, the Commission must report to the European Parliament and the Council on implementation by 30 June 2027 and again by 30 June 2028, with an evaluation report on the loan by 30 June 2029 (Article 29), so the supervisory attention does not end with the Facility. Money that reaches a project through the Ukrainian budget arrives inside that supervisory perimeter, and the Regulation itself reaches down: contracts with anyone receiving Facility funds must carry the Financial Regulation's audit and access rights (Article 9(3)), and persons and entities implementing those funds must report suspected fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and irregularities without delay to the Audit Board, the Commission, OLAF and, where applicable, the EPPO (Article 35(5)).

The Swiss programme applies the same logic at national scale, through eligibility criteria: in the SECO calls to date (see our update on them), the applicant confirms a ten-year clean record with Swiss regulators and courts in the relevant fields and its acceptance of Swiss and international anti-money-laundering rules, declares its compliance with the public-procurement ban and the dual-use provisions of the Ukraine Ordinance, confirms that its activities fall outside SECO's exclusion list of sectors it will not finance, submits a risk identification and mitigation framework, and accepts audit by SECO and the Swiss Federal Audit Office; the contribution itself rests on the Federal Act on Financial Assistance and Subsidies. A selection committee on which the Ukrainian government is represented assesses that posture as part of the bid. National export credit agencies apply comparable anti-bribery and due-diligence standards as a condition of cover.

Gate 3: the banks

The third gate has a rulebook, the anti-money-laundering statutes under which every bank in the chain must know its customer, identify the beneficial owners and apply enhanced diligence wherever its own risk assessment finds high risk, and a Ukrainian nexus is the kind of geographic factor those statutes tell banks to weigh; what it has no published standard for is what a particular bank will accept, because that is a private risk decision.

It applies in both directions. Western companies find that payments to and from Ukraine attract enhanced scrutiny: correspondent banks screen the payment chain, and a transfer that references the wrong counterparty or routes through the wrong intermediary can be held, queried or returned even where it is lawful. Ukrainian companies establishing European or Swiss entities meet the same machinery at onboarding: beneficial-ownership transparency to the last natural person, documented source of funds and, for the owners, source of wealth, which the enhanced-diligence rules require for higher-risk relationships, a clean sanctions nexus analysis, and a coherent account of why the structure exists. In our experience the file that satisfies a funder and the file that satisfies a bank are substantially the same file; companies that build it once, properly, pass both gates faster.

Building the one file that passes all three

The gates test the same underlying facts through different lenses, which is why the efficient approach is a single compliance file built to the strictest applicable standard. It contains: a documented risk assessment for the project and its geography; the corporate chart of every counterparty and consortium member to the ultimate owners, with screening results against the EU, UK, US and Swiss lists and the MDB debarment lists, dated and refreshed on a defined cadence; export-control classification of the goods and technology involved; anti-corruption policies and training records proportionate to the procurement exposure; contract clauses that carry the obligations through the chain, including sanctions and anti-corruption representations, termination rights, audit rights and funder flow-down provisions; and an escalation route with a named owner, because lists change weekly and a screening result is only a snapshot.

Two failure patterns recur. The first is treating screening as a one-off event: the consortium was clean at bid stage, and nobody looked again when a subcontractor changed hands. The second is inconsistency between the layers: the ownership chart given to the bank does not match the self-declaration given to the funder, and the discrepancy, however innocent, becomes the issue. Both are governance failures, and both are avoidable with a file that has one owner and one current version.

What this means for you

• Screen the ownership chain. The EU, UK and Swiss regimes reach owned or controlled entities, and OFAC blocks entities 50 per cent or more owned by blocked persons; registry-level verification of counterparties is the standard the gates apply.
• Check the debarment lists before you bid. Your group and every consortium partner, against the World Bank and EBRD lists; a public debarment of more than a year for fraud, corruption, collusion or coercion by one of the five major development banks is enforced by the others.
• Check Ukraine's own list and the currency rules. A partner on the National Security and Defence Council's sanctions list is out of state procurement, and the National Bank's restrictions decide what can be paid out.
• Build one file to the strictest standard. Funders, banks and regulators test the same facts; inconsistency between submissions is itself a red flag.
• Make it a process with an owner. Defined re-screening cadence, documented decisions, and contractual flow-downs so the obligations survive into the supply chain.
• Confirm positions again at signing. The sanctions regimes are amended continually; every legal position in this area is date-stamped.

Isak Legal advises Swiss, UK, US and European companies on sanctions, AML and compliance frameworks for Ukraine-related projects, and Ukrainian companies on meeting the compliance expectations of Western funders, banks and partners. See our Sanctions and AML and Ukraine: Investment and Reconstruction pages, or get in touch.

This client update is provided for general information only, reflects the position as at 26 September 2026 and does not constitute legal advice or create a lawyer-client relationship. Sanctions and export-control regimes are amended frequently; always verify the current texts and lists at the official sources linked above before acting. For advice on a specific matter, please contact us.