Sanctions Programs and Regulatory Regimes
How programs are organised
Programs are either country/regional (Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Russia and Belarus, Venezuela, Myanmar, and others) or thematic (counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, WMD proliferation, human rights under Global Magnitsky, corruption, hostage-taking). Each program has its own prohibitions and general licences; a name tells you which program, not which rule applies.
Know your lists
- SDN List - full blocking; all dealings prohibited absent authorisation.
- Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) - limited, directive-based prohibitions (for example, restrictions on specified financing or new debt/equity); the entity is not blocked.
- Non-SDN lists - menu-based sanctions, Foreign Sanctions Evaders, CAPTA correspondent-account restrictions, NS-CMIC investment bans.
- Entity List (BIS) - an export control list, not an OFAC list; a BIS licence is not an OFAC authorisation, and both may be needed.
Other regimes operate differently. The UN Consolidated List is a subset of what most national lists contain, so a party absent from it may still be designated. The EU publishes a consolidated list and applies an owned-or-controlled concept that can capture entities below 50 percent where control is established through other means. The UK maintains its own consolidated list and has diverged from the EU since Brexit.
Traps in questions
Assuming SSI equals blocking; assuming the 50 percent rule extends through an SSI entity (it does not - SSI persons are not blocked); assuming one regime's licence covers another's; and assuming lists are static, when designations change daily.
Worked example
A payment to an SSI-listed Russian bank: first check the directive to see whether the specific activity is prohibited, then check whether any party is an SDN, whether a US nexus exists, and whether the goods are export-controlled. Only after all four steps can you conclude the payment is permissible.