Elite London law firm fined £465,000 for Russian sanctions breaches

Former Moscow office of Herbert Smith Freehills made six payments totalling 3.9m to sanctioned banks

Herbert Smith Freehills, the elite global law firm based in London, has been fined by the British government after its former Moscow office made millions of pounds in payments to sanctioned Russian banks.

The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), said it had imposed a penalty of 465,000 on HSF Moscow, which was a subsidiary of HSF London until its closure in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.