OFAC — US Treasury
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is the US Treasury agency responsible for administering economic and trade sanctions. Their primary tool is the Specially Designated Nationals list — roughly 18,700 entries covering individuals, companies, vessels, and aircraft.
The raw list lives at treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdn.xml. It's updated continuously, sometimes multiple times per week.
Who must comply: Any US person — citizen, permanent resident, or US-incorporated entity. More practically: any entity conducting transactions in US dollars, using US correspondent banks, or with any US-person involvement. Most international financial institutions treat OFAC compliance as a baseline regardless of domicile.
Practical implication: If your business touches USD in any form, OFAC is not optional.
UK OFSI — HM Treasury
The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation is the UK equivalent of OFAC, housed within HM Treasury. Since Brexit, the UK maintains its own sanctions list independently of the EU. It broadly mirrors EU sanctions but has diverged — particularly on Russia designations — and continues to diverge over time.
The raw source is a CSV published at assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. The file contains roughly 5,100 unique entities but ~19,700 rows when aliases are expanded — which is why alias-aware fuzzy matching matters here more than on most other lists.
Who must comply: Any UK person or entity, and businesses operating in the UK or handling GBP transactions.
Practical implication: Post-Brexit, checking OFAC and assuming the UK list matches is no longer valid. They diverge.
UN Security Council
The UN SC Consolidated Sanctions List covers individuals and entities designated by UN Security Council committees — primarily the 1267/1989/2253 committee focused on Al-Qaida and ISIS, plus country-specific committees.
The list is available at scsanctions.un.org. Note: HEAD requests return 404 — to check freshness you have to fetch the full file. Coverage is narrower at around 1,000 entries, but it is the authoritative international baseline.
Who must comply: UN member states are obligated to implement UN sanctions. UN designations are incorporated into OFAC, OFSI, and EU lists — but the timing varies. Screening directly against the UN list catches the window before national implementation.
Which do you need?
That depends on where your business operates and where your money moves:
- US operations, USD transactions: OFAC is mandatory. UN is good practice.
- UK operations or GBP: OFAC plus UK OFSI.
- EU operations: OFAC plus EU Financial Sanctions Files.
- Cross-border fintech, international payments, trade finance: All of the above, plus Canada and Australia depending on your corridors.
The honest answer for most international businesses is: screen all of them. The cost of a false negative in sanctions compliance far exceeds the cost of a $29/month API subscription.
The Global Sanctions Screener covers OFAC, UK OFSI, UN Security Council, EU, Canada, Australia, and the US CSL simultaneously. Free tier available.