Two recent situations have prompted me to consider an issue I never focused on before: namely, the legality of receiving payments from — rather than making payments to — sanctioned persons in Australia. It has turned out to be a surprisingly interesting question.
The first of the two situations involves the decision of the Australian tennis player, Thanasi Kokkinakis, to play at an exhibition tournament in St Petersburg sponsored by Gazprom. The initial round of press reporting focused on the wisdom, or otherwise, of taking up Gazprom’s invitation. Then, journalists at SBS and the Sydney Morning Herald zeroed in on the sanctions implications of Kokkinakis’s Russian adventures: assuming Gazprom — a sanctioned person — paid him, could Australian sanctions laws have been breached?
The second situation has to do with the operations in Australia of Press TV, a sanctioned Iranian state TV company. Last month, several Press TV reporters took an interview in Sydney with Fatima Payman, a senator for Western Australia. This raised multiple questions about their reporters’ presence in Australia, among them whether they may have been paid by Press TV — a sanctioned entity — while in the Australian territory.
No Direct Ban
Regulation 14 of the Autonomous Sanctions Regulations 2011 (Cth) makes it an offence to deal with designated persons or entities, but that prohibition only applies to ‘directly or indirectly mak[ing] an asset available to, or for the benefit of, a designated person or entity’ — rather than receiving them.
A separate provision, in Regulation 15, prohibits dealing with controlled assets, i.e. assets owned or controlled by a sanctioned person. This raises the question of whether receiving a payment from a sanctioned person breaches the prohibition. There are two difficulties with the proposition that it does. First, the provision only applies to someone ‘hold[ing] a controlled asset’, suggesting the position of, say, a bank holding funds on a customer’s behalf. Second, if A receives money from a sanctioned person B, by the time the money passes to A it is unlikely to be either owned or controlled by B.
In short, Australian law does not contain a general prohibition on receiving payments from sanctioned persons. This might come as a surprise to many. However, recent guidance from the Australian Sanctions Office, published in January 2025 but curiously dated December 2024, reaffirms the point:
Under Australian sanctions laws, there are no prohibitions on receiving funds or financial assets from a designated person or entity. This includes when receiving funds or financial assets in satisfaction of an existing liability or entitlement. For example, it is not an offence for a person in Australia to receive pension payments from a designated bank in a sanctioned country.
The language in the guidance reportedly reflects concerns that arose with the expansion of Russia sanctions in 2022. With many Russian banks placed on the sanctions list, the question emerged of whether this precluded pension payments to members of the Russian diaspora in Australia. The guidance both pre-empts this question and sheds some light on the likely reason why receiving payments from a sanctioned person is legal to begin with.
Indirectly Making Assets Available
Still, there is more to the issue.
While receiving the payment itself may be legal, providing services in exchange for which the payment is made may amount to indirectly making assets to a sanctioned person.
Under the Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011 (Cth), ‘assets’ only include property. So, the provision of services alone does not trigger this prohibition. However, what if it enables the recipient to make money?
Consider the example of a professional athlete. Playing at a Gazprom-sponsored tournament does not come within the remit of Australian sanctions prohibitions. But, if Gazprom sold tickets to the game and managed to attract a greater crowd thanks to that athlete’s participation, that arguably involves making assets indirectly available to Gazprom. (To be clear, I am not suggesting for a moment that any of this applies to Kokkinakis.) This is irrespective of whether any payment is received.
Does the Law Make Sense?
Zooming out, one might ask whether Australian law makes sense as it stands.
International practice varies. Executive Order 13660 in the US prohibits both making and receiving payments from sanctioned Russian persons, similar to other US sanctions programs. By contrast, the EU’s Council Decision 2014/145/CFSP takes the same approach as Australia. The same is true of UK sanctions.
Ultimately, much depends on how one conceives of the objective of sanctions. If sanctions are meant to constrict the targeted party’s access to resources, then preventing that person from spending their money is irrelevant to that purpose. On the other hand, if sanctions are meant to fully isolate the target from the sanctioning state’s economy, then a more far-reaching prohibition on transacting with the sanctioned person is required.
The narrow approach has obvious limitations. For example, should it be OK for an Australian performer to sign a song at Vladimir Putin’s birthday for a hefty payment? Many — perhaps most — would answer in the negative, but existing sanctions laws do not seem to prevent this at all.
On the other hand, one might argue that the broader approach is over-inclusive, as demonstrated by the pensions example. However, those types of problems could be addressed via the issuance of general licences (permits).
For now, this remains a surprisingly complex and in some ways counter-intuitive area of the law.
Economic Crime Law 