Exxon has won its legal battle against the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and will not have to pay a $2 million civil penalty levied by OFAC in 2017 for violating Ukraine-related sanctions regulations, a federal judge ruled this week.
The dispute over the fine issued in July 2017 by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin concerned a joint exploration contract Exxon had with Russia’s state-run oil company Rosneft. At that time, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, who signed the business deal between the two companies, had been added to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List in April 2014.
