A trading company incorporated in the United Kingdom receives a letter from His Majesty's Treasury. Its assets are frozen. Its counterparties stop taking calls. Its bank accounts are restricted. The designation notice cites reasons; the evidence behind those reasons is not fully disclosed. What can the company do? And how quickly must it act?
Judicial review before the High Court of England and Wales is the primary legal route for challenging an OFSI designation (a financial sanctions designation made under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, known as SAMLA) where the internal review process has not produced a satisfactory outcome. The court assesses the lawfulness of the decision, not its merits in the round, which makes the quality of the evidence package and the legal grounds critical from the outset. The window to act is short, and the consequences of delay compound.
This guide walks through the challenge process step by step – from the moment a designation is received, through the internal review under SAMLA, to the judicial review application, the cross-regime comparison, and the risk flags that determine whether a challenge succeeds or fails. As of February 2026, the regime remains active and evolving; verify current procedural positions before acting.
Step 1: Understanding what an OFSI designation means and what it restricts
An OFSI designation imposes financial sanctions – asset freezes and dealing prohibitions – under SAMLA and the relevant thematic regulations. The designated person cannot access funds or economic resources. UK persons and entities are prohibited from dealing with the designated person or making funds available to them, directly or indirectly.
The practical consequences arrive immediately. Banks suspend accounts. Payment services halt. Business counterparties trigger de-risking (the practice by which a financial institution exits a relationship to avoid sanctions exposure). Supply chains freeze. The reputational effect extends beyond the United Kingdom because OFSI designations are visible to compliance teams operating globally.
Understanding the precise scope of the designation is the first technical task. The designation notice identifies the listed name, any aliases, date of birth, and the legal basis. What it does not always disclose is the full body of evidence relied upon. That asymmetry is a defining feature of UK financial sanctions law, and it shapes the entire challenge strategy. In our experience, clients who read the notice narrowly – as purely a UK problem – consistently underestimate the cross-border dimension.
Step 2: Assessing the grounds for challenge before the internal OFSI review
Before bringing a judicial review application, a designated person must engage with the OFSI internal review process under SAMLA. This is not merely a procedural hurdle; it shapes the evidential record that the court will later examine.
The grounds available are legal rather than purely factual. They include: the designation was made without legal authority; the facts relied upon do not meet the statutory test; the decision-maker failed to take account of a relevant consideration; the process was procedurally unfair; or the outcome is disproportionate. The proportionality ground is important in UK sanctions law because SAMLA-based designations engage Convention rights – in particular, the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions and, in some cases, the right to a fair hearing. A competent challenge will articulate the grounds precisely and map them to the evidence before committing resources.
The position above covers the standard case. Your facts – the counterparty relationships, the underlying conduct alleged, the route by which information reached OFSI – change the analysis. To discuss the merits of a potential challenge, contact Calder & Vance at info@caldervance.com.
At this stage, practitioners advising on OFSI matters consistently flag one question the designated person must answer honestly: is there a plausible legal argument, or is the challenge primarily a time-buying exercise? Courts are unimpressed by the latter. A challenge without a sound legal basis exposes the applicant to adverse costs and hardens the authorities' negotiating position on any subsequent licence application.
Step 3: Running the OFSI internal review – what to prepare and how to present it
The OFSI internal review is the mandatory administrative stage. OFSI must conduct the review and notify the designated person of its outcome. The designated person may submit representations, and these representations form a critical part of the evidential record.
What goes into the representations matters enormously. A well-structured submission addresses each factual allegation that can be identified from the designation notice; presents documentary evidence – corporate records, financial transaction data, contemporaneous correspondence – with clarity; and makes the legal argument for why the designation does not meet the statutory test. Generic protestations of innocence are not persuasive. Specificity is.
Timing is equally important. Representations filed hastily may be incoherent. Representations filed too slowly may prejudice later arguments about delay. In our cross-border practice, we often advise clients to treat the internal review as if it were a first-instance court filing – because the court will read it that way later. Do you have access to all the documents you need to make that case? If not, the first step is identifying what you can obtain and what you cannot.
Where the designated person is also subject to parallel designations – for example, under EU Council regulations or OFAC's SDN List – the internal review strategy must take account of those positions simultaneously. An admission made in OFSI representations can be used by another authority. Coordination across regimes is not optional.
Step 4: Applying for judicial review of the designation – procedure and key decision points
If the OFSI internal review produces an outcome that the designated person wishes to contest – whether a confirmation of the designation, a modification, or a revocation that comes too late to repair the damage – judicial review is the next route. The application is made to the Administrative Court, part of the High Court of England and Wales.
The application for permission to apply for judicial review must be filed promptly. UK procedural rules impose a general requirement of promptness and a maximum period that is measured from the date the decision being challenged was made or notified; verify the current limitation position with specialist counsel before the window closes. Delay is one of the most common reasons permission is refused. Courts take it seriously.
At the permission stage, the applicant must show an arguable case – a relatively low threshold, but one that filters out applications without a tenable legal ground. At the substantive hearing, the court asks whether the decision was lawful: whether OFSI acted within its statutory powers, followed a fair procedure, took account of the right matters, and reached a decision that is proportionate. The court does not stand in OFSI's shoes and make the decision afresh; it reviews the process and the reasoning.
Closed material procedures are a distinctive feature of UK sanctions litigation. Where national security considerations are engaged, some of the evidence relied upon by OFSI may be withheld from the applicant and their open counsel, and instead reviewed by a Special Advocate appointed to represent the applicant's interests in a closed session. This changes the character of the litigation fundamentally. A designated person and their lawyers may never see the core intelligence said to justify the designation. Preparing for this possibility from the outset affects how the open case is built and what concessions are made.
If a transaction has already been flagged, or a review has produced an unfavourable outcome, an early assessment can preserve options that narrow with time. Contact Calder & Vance at info@caldervance.com to discuss next steps.
How does judicial review of an OFSI designation compare to challenge routes in other regimes?
The UK judicial review route differs materially from comparable mechanisms in the EU, the United States, and before the United Nations – and those differences affect the strategy for any business facing designations across more than one system.
Under EU Council regulations, a designated person may bring an annulment action before the EU General Court under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The EU General Court reviews the factual and legal basis of the designation more intensively than the UK Administrative Court does. It applies a structured proportionality test and has, on a number of occasions, annulled designations on the basis that the Council's evidence was insufficient or that the stated reasons did not support the conclusion drawn. The court examines the evidence itself; it does not simply ask whether OFSI-equivalent reasoning was reasonable. That more searching standard is both an opportunity and a risk: the evidentiary demands on the applicant are correspondingly higher.
In the United States, a person listed on the SDN List (OFAC's list of Specially Designated Nationals and blocked persons) has several administrative routes – an administrative reconsideration before OFAC – before turning to federal court. US judicial review of OFAC designations is generally deferential to the executive in national security matters, and the closed-material parallel is addressed through classified evidence procedures. The US route is typically slower than the UK internal review process, though precise timelines depend on the specific programme and the complexity of the matter.
Before the United Nations, a person listed under Security Council sanctions may petition the Ombudsperson (in the case of the ISIL/Al-Qaida regime) or the Focal Point (for other Security Council regimes). These are administrative, not judicial, processes. The Ombudsperson has real authority to recommend de-listing; the Focal Point channels the petition to the relevant Committee, which retains the discretion. Neither route involves independent judicial scrutiny. For individuals and businesses subject to Security Council-derived designations that have been transposed into UK law under SAMLA, the question of which route to prioritise is a strategic one, not a mechanical one.
The key comparison point for cross-border businesses: where designations exist simultaneously under UK, EU, and US regimes, a successful judicial review in England does not automatically lift the EU listing or remove the name from the SDN List. Each regime must be addressed separately. We regularly advise clients on the sequencing of those challenges – which regime to move on first, how arguments transfer across proceedings, and where inconsistencies in the authorities' evidence can be surfaced most effectively.
Risk flags: when a designation challenge is hardest to sustain
Not every designation is vulnerable to challenge. Knowing the risk flags in advance prevents wasted resources and, more importantly, prevents a poorly constructed challenge from hardening the authority's position.
The challenge is hardest where the designation rests substantially on classified intelligence that the applicant will never see. A closed-material procedure removes the applicant's ability to test the core evidence directly. The Special Advocate can challenge the intelligence internally, but cannot share its content with the applicant. Where the open evidence – what the applicant can actually see – is thin but the court is told the closed evidence is strong, the likelihood of a successful open-record challenge is limited.
A second risk flag is delay. Courts apply promptness requirements strictly in judicial review proceedings. A designated person who waits too long to file – whether because they were seeking a commercial resolution, hoping the designation would be reviewed administratively, or simply unaware of the legal clock – faces a substantive barrier to permission. The window is not generous.
Third: a challenge is weakened where the designated person has made public statements or taken positions in other proceedings that are inconsistent with the case they now wish to advance. The evidential record, in UK sanctions litigation, includes everything that is in the public domain.
Fourth, where co-designees – related individuals or entities designated at the same time under the same stated rationale – have not challenged their designations, the court may draw adverse inferences or treat the authority's basis for the designation as more settled.
Fifth: resource asymmetry. OFSI, supported by His Majesty's Treasury legal teams and, where relevant, the intelligence services, has significant capacity to defend a designation. A designated person without specialist legal advice is at a structural disadvantage. Early instruction of sanctions lawyers with court experience is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for a viable challenge.
A common misconception corrected: internal review is not a substitute for judicial review
A recurring misconception among businesses facing a designation is that the OFSI internal review – if they engage with it thoroughly – is likely to resolve the matter. In our experience, that expectation is wrong as a general proposition. The internal review is conducted by OFSI itself, not by an independent body. The standard of review it applies is not the same as a court's, and the outcome – even a partial success – does not provide the legal certainty that only a court can deliver.
The internal review matters for two reasons: it is a precondition of judicial review, and it builds the record. But it is not a substitute for independent legal challenge where there are genuine grounds. Businesses that treat the internal review as the endpoint, rather than as a stage in a longer process, sometimes find that the window for judicial review has closed by the time they conclude the administrative process was unsatisfactory.
A related misconception is that a licence application – an OFSI-specific licence allowing specific transactions despite the designation – is an alternative to challenge. It is not. A licence addresses the consequences of a designation; it does not address the designation itself. A client may need both: a licence to restore operational capacity quickly, and a judicial review to address the underlying legal status. Distinguishing between those two instruments, and managing them in parallel where appropriate, is part of sound compliance counsel.
Related practices:
- Delisting evidence package – Australia – building the factual and legal case for Australian autonomous sanctions de-listing
- Judicial review of a designation under SECO – procedural guide to challenging Swiss autonomous sanctions designations
- Judicial review of a designation in Singapore – challenge routes under Singapore's applicable sanctions regime