Sanctions circumvention via private-law instruments: Ukrainian courts and legislative reform

Purpose This paper aims to analyse how, in 2018–2025, Ukrainian civil and commercial courts have been used to detect and neutralise sanctions circumvention schemes that are disguised as ordinary private-law transactions in the wartime context. Design/methodology/approach This study used doctrinal analysis of Ukrainian legislation and sanction-related court decisions (2018–2025), purposive sampling and coding by evasion/circumvention pathway, followed by triangulation against official anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) and export-control guidance and relevant EU/US policy documents. Findings Based on seven court disputes (2018–2025), this paper identifies recurring sanctions-circumvention typologies implemented through private-law instruments (registry manipulation/beneficial-ownership concealment, asset transfers, procedural substitution, claim assignment and award-based debt collection). The courts’ reasoning consistently turns on continuity of control, temporal proximity between designation and the transaction and opacity/artificiality of the restructuring. Supreme Court practice on recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards shows heightened scrutiny where the economic beneficiary may be a sanctioned entity. Research limitations/implications Research limitations include jurisdiction-specific evidence; replication in EU implementing jurisdictions is recommended. Practical implications Practical implications include transaction-level risk indicators for banks, corporates and investigators; policy options to align civil-law remedies with AML/CFT and export-control objectives. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to derive a sanctions-circumvention taxonomy for Ukraine directly from court practice and to translate that case law into a structured set of transaction-level risk indicators and policy options for aligning civil-law remedies with sanctions, AML/CFT and export-control objectives.