Following the revolutions in 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt and 2014 in Ukraine, the Council of the European Union imposed misappropriation sanctions on people suspected of corruption from the ousted regimes. These require that any assets relating to people on the list, including houses and bank accounts, are frozen in all EU Member States.

Sanctions are imposed by the Council of the EU to promote the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy: peace, democracy and respect for the rule of law, human rights and international law.

The aim of the measures was to return assets invested or hiddenin EU Member States that had been misappropriated from the three countries and to signal political support to the new governments, as well as support citizens in their efforts to improve the rule of law and establish democratic pluralism and respect for human rights

Each year, the Council of the EU decides whether these sanctions should be renewed, amended or lifted. Therefore, a number of individuals have already been delisted, including all of those initially sanctioned for misappropriation relating to Egypt. Sanctions imposed on Egyptian individuals were lifted entirely in March 2021 and therefore are not included in this database.

At the moment, there are 38 individuals on the misappropriation sanctions list:

• 35 persons from Tunisia (out of 48 initially sanctioned)
• 3 persons from Ukraine (out of 22 initially sanctioned)