OFAC Sanctions

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What Are The OFAC Sanctions Lists?

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a US Department of Treasury agency that implements commercial and economic sanctions to support US security and foreign policy objectives. It is the most functional organization in the United States in the fight against financial crimes. The US may apply these OFAC Lists of sanctions to individuals, institutions, and countries. There are also OFAC sanctioned countries.

OFAC Check is part of the U.S. Treasury, which concludes whether an entity or blocked persons can do business with the United States, especially regarding finances and trade. If an entity or individual is caught violating this, they can have criminal penalties against them, including fines between $50,000 to $10 million and imprisonment between 10 and 30 years.

OFAC's Sanctions List Search tool employs fuzzy logic on its name search field to look for potential matches on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List and its Consolidated Sanctions List. It's also called the OFAC Screening Tool and OFAC Search.

OFAC publishes sanctions lists of individuals, institutions, or countries that threaten national security. These lists are called OFAC Sanctions Lists. Some of these lists are:

  • Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List):  Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) Lists, published by OFAC, list persons who are prohibited from doing business by US citizens and those who must comply with US regulations.
  • The Consolidated Sanctions List: Consolidated Sanctions List is another sanction list other than SDN sanction lists published by OFAC.

Some lists in the Consolidated Sanctions OFAC List:

  • Foreign Sanctions Evaders (FSE) List: It is an OFAC list of foreign individuals and organizations that have been found to have violated US sanctions against Syria or Iran.
  • Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) List: OFAC lists the people, companies, and organizations in the Russian economy's energy and finance sectors. US citizens and institutions are prohibited from doing business with people on this list.
  • Palestinian Legislative Council (NS-PLC) List
  • The List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Part 561 (the Part 561 List)
  • Non-SDN Iranian Sanctions Act (NS-ISA) List
  • List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account Sanctions (CAPTA List)​


How to Comply with OFAC Compliance?

OFAC regulations apply to all US citizens, US companies, and individuals or businesses doing business with the United States. OFAC lists impose heavy penalties on firms and persons dealing with persons in the sanction lists. Companies have to follow customer transactions and companies have to report suspicious transactions to OFAC. 

There are numerous and different formats of OFAC sanction lists. Firms must follow the sanction lists to ensure OFAC compliance. Controlling the sanction lists manually can be a waste of time for companies. Sanction Screening Tool such as Sanction Scanner automatically performs control operations. Your queries in Sanction Scanner are scanned in thousands of sanctions lists at the same time.

Sanction Scanner’s database consists of over 1000 Sanctions, regulatory and law enforcement, and other official global and local sanction and pep lists, including those issued by the USA, UK, UN, and other global majors minor government departments. For more information, you can contact us or request a demo. 


AML Name Screening Software for OFAC Sanctions



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