Dalston Projects Ltd and others (Appellants) v Secretary of State for Transport (Respondent)
| Judge | Lord Reed ,Lord Sales ,Lord Leggatt ,Lady Rose ,Lord Richards |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 2025 |
| Neutral Citation | [2025] UKSC 30 |
| Docket Number | UKSC/2024/0045,UKSC/2024/0055 |
| Issue Date | 21 March 2024 |
| Respondent | Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs,Secretary of State for Transport |
| Hearing Date | 15 January 2025,16 January 2025 |
| Court | Supreme Court |
Trinity Term
[2025] UKSC 30
On appeal from: [2024] EWCA Civ 172
JUDGMENT
Shvidler (Appellant) v Secretary of State for
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
(Respondent);
Dalston Projects Ltd and others (Appellants) v
Secretary of State for Transport (Respondent)
before
Lord Reed, President
Lord Sales
Lord Leggatt
Lady Rose
Lord Richards
JUDGMENT GIVEN ON
29 July 2025
Heard on 15 and 16 January 2025
Appellant – UKSC 2024/0045
Lord Anderson of Ipswich KC
Malcolm Birdling
Alastair Richardson
(Instructed by Peters & Peters Solicitors LLP)
Respondent – UKSC 2024/0045
Sir James Eadie KC
Jason Pobjoy
Rayan Fakhoury
(Instructed by Government Legal Department)
Appellants – UKSC 2024/0055
Philip Goeth
Ali Al-Karim
(Instructed by W Legal Ltd)
Respondent – UKSC 2024/0055
Sir James Eadie KC
Jason Pobjoy
Emmeline Plews
Tom Watret
(Instructed by Government Legal Department)
Page 2
LORD SALES AND LADY ROSE (with whom Lord Reed and Lord Richards
agree):
1. Introduction
1. These appeals raise important questions about the operation of the sanctions
regime put in place by the United Kingdom government to put pressure on the Russian
Federation to end its aggressive war against Ukraine. The primary legislation, the
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (“SAMLA”), confers extensive powers
on Ministers to make regulations allowing the imposition of stringent restrictions on
individuals and businesses. The people who can be subject to sanctions are not alleged to
have committed any criminal offences or to have otherwise engaged in any wrongdoing
either here or overseas. Ministers may target any individuals and businesses falling within
broadly defined classes. Those people can then be subject to severe restrictions on their
ability to travel, to deal with their own assets, to do business and to engage in many
everyday activities. Their friends and colleagues are at risk themselves of committing
criminal offences if they engage with the sanctioned person in any of a wide range of
different ways. The decisions taken by Ministers in the exercise of those powers can
therefore have a prolonged and potentially devastating effect on the individuals and their
families.
2. The Minister’s decision to sanction a person is subject to a statutory right of review
for the person affected before the High Court or, in Scotland, the Court of Session. In
deciding whether to set aside the decision, the court must apply the principles applicable
on an application for judicial review. In accordance with those principles, the sanctioned
person can challenge the decision to impose sanctions on the ground that the measures
interfere with his or her human rights, in particular their rights under article 8 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”) to respect for their private
and family life and under article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention (“A1P1”)
concerning the protection of property. Part of the exercise that the court must carry out in
determining whether the sanctions infringe the target’s rights is to decide whether the
interference with those rights is proportionate to the aim for which the sanctions are
imposed. That test of the proportionality of the interference with the sanctioned person’s
rights is at the centre of both these appeals.
3. The appellants in these two appeals have been made subject to sanctions. The
sanctions were imposed on them in the exercise of powers conferred on Ministers by the
Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/855), as amended in 2022.
Eugene Shvidler has been designated by the Secretary of State for Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Affairs (“the Foreign Secretary”). He was designated
on 24 March 2022, a month after Russia invaded Ukraine. The effect of this is to freeze
his assets worldwide and to make it a criminal offence for other people to deal with him
in either a private or commercial capacity, subject to a few exceptions.
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