High Court rejects Belarus de-listing case & says UK sanctions listings don’t engage ECHR jurisdiction unless there is property in the UK

14/02/25

The UK High Court has rejected Dana Astra’s application for court review of the Government’s decision not to de-list it from the UK’s Belarus sanctions list.

Dana Astra, a property company, was designated on the UK’s Belarus sanctions regulations in 2020 (re-listed in February and August 2023) for being “involved in the repression of civil society/democratic opposition in Belarus” by sponsoring the Belarusian National Olympic Committee, and for “obtaining a benefit from/supporting the Government of Belarus” by carrying on business in the construction sector in the “Minsk World” project.

Dana Astra challenged the Government’s decision not to de-list it under the UK Sanctions Act as irrational and disproportionate to its A1P1 rights, since: 

• Dana Astra cancelled its sponsorship agreement with the Olympic Committee as soon as the International Olympic Committee found that the Belarus Olympic Committee had not adequately protected its athletes from the government crackdown after the August 2020 elections and repeatedly asked the committee to take down its logo so this was not involvement in the suppression of democracy; and

• Dana plainly does not now “benefit from or support the regime”; in fact it is subject to far-reaching sanctions by the Belarus regime itself as a step towards expropriating its business, to the extent it is able to operate at all it is because the government has made clear it will otherwise expropriate the project.

The High Court (Saini J) held that:

1. The UK sanctioning Dana Astra is not an exercise of UK jurisdiction over Dana for the purposes of art. 1 ECHR because it does not have property in the UK;

2. The Government was not obliged to accept that the fact that Dana Astra had stopped sponsoring the Belarus Olympic committee removed support for the committee;

3. While Dana Astra is “suffering negatively at the hands of” the Belarussian regime, it was not “singled out” but rather one of a number of companies with foreign shareholders subject to negative treatment. In any event, it was not open to Dana Astra to say that it had not benefitted from the regime because it accepted that it had operated a construction business in Belarus and was therefore an “involved person” within the definition in the UK regulations. 

4.Given Dana’s prominent role in the Belarus construction sector and its involvement in a high-profile project, its designation might discourage business operations in strategically important sectors in Belarus.

The judgment is here - [2025] EWHC 289.