Making funds and economic resources available: what an asset freeze prohibits

When a person or entity is subject to an EU asset freeze, two separate things are prohibited. Taking Regulation (EU) No 267/2012 (Iran) as an example, Article 23 sets them out: their funds and economic resources are frozen - anything belonging to, owned, held or controlled by the listed party (Article 23(1) and (2)); and no funds or economic resources may be made available to them, directly or indirectly, or for their benefit (Article 23(3)). The second limb is the one traders might miss. It is not only about the listed party's own money. It prohibits you from providing them with anything of value.

What counts as economic resources

This is where goods come in. The regulation defines the term broadly. Economic resources means "assets of every kind, whether tangible or intangible, movable or immovable, which are not funds, but which may be used to obtain funds, goods or services". Goods are tangible, movable assets that can be sold or used to obtain funds, goods or services. So goods are economic resources.

The consequence is direct: supplying goods to a listed party makes economic resources available to them, and that is prohibited. It does not matter that you are selling at a fair price rather than giving the goods away. It does not matter that the goods themselves are ordinary and face no export controls of their own. What matters is who receives them. And 'directly or indirectly' reaches further still - it also catches goods routed through a third party acting for the listed person, or supplied for their benefit.

This is a different question from export controls. Export controls ask what the goods are - whether they are dual-use or otherwise restricted. The making-available prohibition asks who the recipient is. A shipment can be perfectly fine on the goods and still be prohibited because of the party at the other end.

Narrow authorisations can exist - competent authorities may license certain releases or supplies, for example for basic needs or humanitarian purposes - but they must be granted before you act, not assumed.

Use case

A trader plans to ship educational materials to Malek Ashtar University in Iran and asks Sanctions AI whether any restrictions apply.

The answer is that they do. Malek Ashtar University is subject to an EU asset freeze - it is listed in Annex VIII of Regulation (EU) No 267/2012 (EU designation 24 June 2008; UN designation 9 June 2010) - and it appears on the UK and US lists as well. Educational materials are goods, goods are economic resources, and economic resources may not be made available to a listed party. So the asset freeze catches the shipment, even though the materials are unremarkable and the recipient is a university.

The query also shows why care is needed at the matching stage. It returned several listed entities - the university under the EU, UK and US regimes, and a separately listed entity, the Iran Composites Institute, which names Malek Ashtar University among its associated entities. Sanctions AI does not make the decision for you. It analyses the sanctions lists and the underlying regulations and returns a reasoned answer, and here it flags that a manual review is needed to confirm the correct match against the official source before you proceed. Try Sanctions AI.