By Adam Turteltaub

It’s not a good time to be a manufacturer of ten-foot poles. That’s because with the growing number of sanctions regimes, there are an increasing number of companies and individuals that businesses shouldn’t touch with a poll of ten feet, or any length for that matter.

Rachel Gerstein, who most recently served as Vice President, Global Ethics and Compliance Counsel for Gartner, explains in this podcast that trade sanctions are laws and regulations designed to prevent and punish engaging with countries, organization and individuals who the government has deemed a threat to national and international security, or has committed human rights violations.

Many countries have sanctions regimes, although the United States tends to have the strongest. The US, for example, has countrywide sanctions against Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea, as well as numerous sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

The government’s enforcement arm is the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which has developed comprehensive guidance for compliance programs. It includes five pillars that will sound very familiar to anyone in compliance:

Management commitment

Risk assessment

Internal controls

Testing and monitoring

Training

In addition to the obvious similarities in compliance program design, there is also great practical overlap. Third party vetting for anticorruption risk, for example, can also include sanctions-related checks. When determining if the company’s owners are politically exposed, it’s an ideal time to determine if there is 50% ownership by a sanctioned individual or entity.

Training is another common element and particularly important. Individuals involved in payments and account receivable need to be educated in sanctions risks and what to watch out for. Employees across the workforce also need to be sensitized to the issue. Europeans, for example, may see Cuba as just another exotic Caribbean vacation destination and not realize the risk.

Of course, there are also different tools also used for sanctions compliance. Your bank, for one, may be an asset given that it may be keeping its own list of sanctioned entities.

Geoblockling is a tool that can be used to determine what country someone is communicating to you from and can be used by you to block interactions.

In short, there is a great deal of risk, but there are great similarities with other compliance efforts, enabling you to combine sanctions compliance with other compliance efforts.

But, you’re still not likely to need that ten-foot pole.

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