What is OFAC Sanctions?

What Is the OFAC Sanctions List?

In this blog post, we’ll be talking about the OFAC Sanctions List. This list is created by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). We’ll give more information to our readers about this list that compiles entities and individuals or even countries. The list is compiled by the U.S. government that has sanctioned these parties because of crimes like terrorism, money laundering, human rights violations or other illegal activities of the same kind. Knowing more about this will make sure you’re not collaborating with sanctioned and prohibited people and companies.

Who Is Included in the OFAC List?

Individuals, companies, and even countries are in the OFAC sanctions list if they are risky to global financial system. Terrorists and organized crime groups, drug and human traffickers, and companies that let money laundering happen, and companies that help sanctioned parties are in this list. As you can imagine, in extreme cases, countries and their governments can be listed to protect the U.S. from risks.

How Does the OFAC Sanctions List Work?

Cutting off sanctioned parties from the U.S. financial system and international markets is how the OFAC sanctions list operates. If you are placed on the list, your assets that are under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen so that you can’t take out your money. Transaction bans are another way; if you are placed on the list, U.S. individuals and firms can’t trade, make transactions, or offer financial services to you no matter what. One more thing that is recommended to companies is ongoing monitoring which ensures screening of customers and transactions.

What Is the SDN List?

The Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) is the strictest list of OFAC. This list is similar to other sanctions lists where people, businesses, and governments can be included. If you are on this list, you likely had a hand in terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, narcotics trafficking, human rights abuses, and many more crimes of similar nature. This list is no joke, being on it gets you in the toughest punishment there might be; all of your U.S. assets being frozen and being unable to do financial or trade dealings. 

What Are the Other OFAC Lists?

Other than the SDN List which we’ve just mentioned, OFAC has other sanctions lists to implement more specific restrictions. One example we can give is the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) List that is tasked with more specific industries. This is why Russian finance and energy companies are restricted rather than banning the whole country. There are also lists that are not as strict as the SDN list. The Foreign Sanctions Evaders (FSE) List, the Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account (CAPTA) List, and the Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies (CMİC) List are lists where the places they are being imposed to are smaller, and the purpose is more specific. 

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 22 container ships in August 2025 for links to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the son of Ali Shamkhani, a top political adviser to Iran’s supreme leader and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. Of those 22 boxships, 16 were on charter to SeaLead. OFAC provided a general license to these companies. SeaLead then terminated all charterparties and contracts related to the sanctioned vessels and entities. 

What Is an OFAC Sanctions List Check?

After learning all of these about the OFAC Sanctions List, you may be interested in conducting checks to make sure your company is not involved with these entities that are sanctioned. The OFAC Sanctions List check is a screening process exactly for this. But how is the OFAC check done? Your first step should be finding more out about the individuals and entities you’re wanting to run a check on; their identification information should be enough. Afterwards, using OFAC’s official Sanctions List Search (SLS) to look for their names manually is your next step. Automated screening can help you immensely during these steps by continuously making checks both during onboarding and afterwards. The results you get from these checks then should be documented by you and sent to appropriate places to take action if needed. You can do your search here.

Best Practices for OFAC Screening

If you’ve decided to implement OFAC screening tools for your companies, our Sanction Scanner team is there for you as you’re deciding which practices are the best for your company. An important step is to use fuzzy matching and alias detection to make sure you’re not letting sanctioned people and firms who are using another name escape your radars. Ongoing monitoring is also important, just doing screenings during onboarding will risk missing updates about a customer afterwards. Compliance programs should operate with features that cover parts like crypto wallets and vessels. Training compliance teams to make sure they know how to use these features and deal with alerts of every kind is also recommended. 

What Is an OFAC License?

An OFAC license from the U.S. Treasury is needed to operate and take part in certain things that would otherwise be risky and prohibited because of sanctions. A General License is for pre-approved categories like humanitarian aid transactions to ensure you can operate while meeting their terms without asking OFAC every single time. But a Specific License is used if your specific situation doesn’t align with any of the general exemptions. Your company should apply to OFAC and get their approval before operating if this is the case.

To give one example to general licenses, on May 2025, OFAC issued General License 25, titled “Authorizing Transactions Prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations or Involving Certain Blocked Persons.” This license effectively suspends OFAC sanctions targeting Syria. 

OFAC Sanctions Compliance Checklist

We at Sanction Scanner advise our readers to have a checklist to make sure you are fully complying with the OFAC sanctions list. The first item on our list is screening all parties your company is interacting with. These people or companies may be on the sanctions list and you wouldn’t want to deal with the risks that come with these parties later. Many companies use automated screening tools like Sanction Scanner to make sure they’re reaching compliance without manually needing to check these lists. Ongoing monitoring of transactions and other high risk activities is also recommended by us; even though onboarding is important, it’s equally important to check these parties later on. These OFAC lists get updates frequently, and we advise you stay up-to-date with their developments and train your staff accordingly to make sure they can handle potential suspects and report them to OFAC as you are required to do so.

How to Check the OFAC List?

The least your company do is check the OFAC sanctions list manually by using the OFAC Sanctions List Search (SLS) online to see if they are working with risky people, firms, or countries. Another way to do so for companies that deal with a higher amount of parties or need continuous checking to reach compliance is integrating API-based screening to your AML of payment software; automation will help you check faster and more efficiently. You can also use screening platforms that are more advanced since they have features like real-time alerts, fuzzy matching, and alias detection that help ease your compliance needs without leading to violations.

Example OFAC Sanction List as of September 2025

All the data taken from OFAC Sanction List Search. For the full and updated OFAC Sanctions List, visit the official OFAC page. All SDN Lists are updated daily. The list includes only Venezuela, CAATSA - Russia and IRAN data. List is based on politicians and businessperson, doesn't include entitites.

What are the OFAC Sanctioned Countries?

As of the current information, the following countries are subject to sanctions:

• Afghanistan
• Balkans
• Belarus
• Burma
• Central African Republic
• Cuba
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Ethiopia
• Hong Kong
• Iran 
• Iraq
• Lebanon
• Libya
• Mali
• Nicaragua
• North Korea
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Syria
• Ukraine/Russia related sanctions
• Venezuela
• Yemen
• Zimbabwe

Major OFAC Sanctions Programs (2025)

There are several important OFAC sanctions programs that are each designed for different threats. Our first example is the Russia sanctions program; this program is mainly for banks, oligarchs, and key industries. This program was last updated in June 2025. The Iran program is another example; this program deals with the oil sector and the IRGC, it is continuously updated. The North Korea program, on the other hand, is for weapons of mass destrution proliferation sanctions. It was updated in March 2025. There is also a program for terrorist and criminal organizations like ISIL and international drug cartels. This program was updated in June 2025. The final program we’ll talk about is the cyber sanctions program; this one focuses on ransomware groups and other risky groups. The latest update was in May 2025.

What to Do If You Get a Match?

We’ve talked about the steps that are needed to figure out if some party is on the OFAC list. If you get a match during these screenings you conduct, there are more step that follow. Our readers should first stop the suspicious transaction to prevent further prohibited activity. Getting the details of the party next is essential; details like name address, and date of birth helps confirm there is an exact match. After the verification step, consulting your compliance or legal team will help you while figuring out the next steps you need to take. You should report your findings to the OFAC like the regulatory requirements say. Our final recommendation is maintaining a detailed audit trail of all the steps you’ve completed for regulatory reviews and record-keeping purposes.

OFAC Compliance Software – Sanction Scanner

Our experts at Sanction Scanner offer real time OFAC screening services for our customers. Our services cover more than 220 countries, making sure international coverage is reached. Our system also checks against SDN and SSI lists to help find any suspicious party.