The Legal Effect of Sanctions Exemption Clauses of International Trade Financing Instruments in Judical Determination
With the economic sanctions and anti-sanctions becoming an important game in the legal level,cross-bor-der commercial subjects began to frequently use sanctions exemption clauses in international trade to avoid the legal risks derived from economic sanctions and anti-sanctions. Especially in international trade financing instruments,improper use of sanctions exemption clauses will lead to uncertainty in the legal application of documentary credit,standby letter of credit,documentary collection and demand guarantee,and may make people question the effec-tiveness of these international trade financing instruments,and even lead to their loss of the original independent guarantee system function. Recently,sanctions exemption clauses have shown a trend of normalization,formatting and standardization in international trade. The issue of legal effect has become a key consideration for international trade parties to use and design sanctions exemption clauses. In view of the absence of international commercial prac-tices and domestic laws on the legal effect of sanctions exemption clauses,domestic courts can play an important role as producers of global trade,commercial and financial legal rules,fill the gap in the legal effect determination of sanctions exemption clauses by providing guiding judicial judgment rules in time,and maintain the stability and predictability value of international trade financing instruments. In practice,especially in international commercial practice and domestic private law,the sanctions exemption clauses,as important means to transfer and avoid the risks of economic sanctions between private subjects,lack clear legal basis and do not form specific rules for deter-mining the effectiveness,which will inevitably lead to legal conflicts with mandatory economic sanctions,and there is a great crisis of legality,effectiveness and enforceability in application of law. In view of different positions,there are obvious differences in the understanding of different subjects such as the International Chamber of Commerce,domestic courts and transnational financial institutions. For China,domestic courts should create specific judgment rules in time in judicial determination to provide directional guidance for the parties to use and design sanctions ex-emption clauses. When domestic financial institutions provide cross-border financial services,it is necessary to insert sanctions exemption clauses for the internalization of external risks,but do not try to go beyond the scope of economic sanctions,and try to use legal terms with clear meanings and clear categories. When Chinese enterprises are the beneficiaries of independent letters of guarantee and letters of credit,the existence of sanctions exemption clauses will inevitably lead to bank payment delay or other uncertainties and unnecessary risks. It should be noted that from the operational practice of multinational banks,we should pay attention to the following two issues in deal-ing with the relationship between the sanctions exemption clauses and the internal compliance policy:on the one hand,financial institutions,as issuers of independent letters of guarantee and letters of credit,cannot write the in-ternal compliance policy into the sanctions exemption clauses;on the other hand,although the sanction measures of the sanctions initiator are always closely linked with the export control of the sanctioned country,our enterprises as beneficiaries in international trade financing settlement,cannot take the internal compliance mechanism of export control of enterprises as a defense for banks to refuse to pay for the purpose of complying with the sanction meas-ures.
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