Ongoing Review Ensures Sanctions Remain Targeted, Effective, and Current
WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took another major action in its sanctions modernization effort, announced by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent in May. Today’s action removed from OFAC’s sanctions lists 125 individuals and entities, consistent with current economic, national security, and foreign policy priorities. OFAC also updated 22 list entries to facilitate and enhance compliance screening.
Those removed include deceased individuals, defunct companies, and list entries lacking sufficient information for robust compliance screening. As with any removal from its sanctions lists, and consistent with prior sanctions modernization actions, OFAC conducted interagency review to ensure that today’s removals would not harm U.S. foreign policy or national security interests.
PRIORITIZING SANCTIONS IMPACT AND SUCCESS
As Secretary Bessent has outlined, the goal of Treasury’s sanctions modernization effort is to ensure U.S. sanctions remain targeted, effective, and aligned with U.S. economic, foreign policy, and national security priorities. The Trump Administration is measuring the success of its sanctions in terms of effect, impact, and benefit—not just based on the number of names Treasury places on a list.
Today’s action is part of this broader effort to streamline sanctions for greater efficiency and effectiveness, including through the review of sanctions programs that no longer support U.S. national security priorities. For example, on September 18, OFAC removed sanctions on six individuals and entities designated pursuant to a 2021 Ethiopia-related national emergency and sanctions program, which was not renewed because the circumstances that led to the underlying national emergency have changed such that the United States no longer requires the Ethiopia sanctions program to advance U.S. interests.
Sanctions list entries without appropriate identifying information can hamper private sector screening efforts by producing false positive matches. These may require financial institutions and businesses to spend considerable time on manual review and detract from compliance investigations that are consistent with current national security priorities. Accordingly, alongside today’s delistings, OFAC’s list updates have added new identifiers and removed outdated ones; this will further reduce compliance screening burden.
MODERNIZING SANCTIONS RECONSIDERATION
The power and integrity of OFAC sanctions derive not only from OFAC’s ability to designate persons and add them to the SDN List, but also from its willingness to remove persons from the SDN List when appropriate and consistent with the law.
For information on the process for seeking removal from an OFAC sanctions list, including the SDN List, please refer to How to Request Removal from an OFAC Sanctions List | Office of Foreign Assets Control. The recently released Reconsideration Portal enables persons and property on an OFAC sanctions list—or their authorized representatives—to submit delisting petitions and request certain information underlying their sanctions determinations.
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