Wealth Managers Desperately Try to Win Treasury's Approval to Liquidate Frozen Libyan Assets

Co-head of Pillsbury’s Consumer & Retail practice Deborah Thoren-Peden, a leading authority on electronic banking issues, said that the challenges wealth managers faced were not unprecedented. “Similar issues had emerged when economic sanctions were imposed against former Liberian president Charles Taylor, certain individuals in the Balkans and a number of individuals in the former Iraqi regime,” she said.

She did agree that the amount of wealth affected by this particular case might make the navigation sanctions "unusually difficult". She said that firms considering filing for an OFAC license should "draft their request in a way that lays out their justification for an exception to the sanction. Such justifications might include the negative impact or market losses that could be experienced by individuals or entities that were not meant to be affected by the sanctions, or issues related to humanitarian efforts.” She added that because of the time sensitivity, they might want to consider asking OFAC for an expedited decision.