Sanctions lists explained: OFAC, EU, UN, UK and more
A sanctions list is an official register of the people, companies, vessels and jurisdictions a regulated firm is prohibited or restricted from dealing with. There is no single global list; a compliance program has to screen against several overlapping regimes at once, and each one is structured differently. This guide sets out who issues the major sanctions lists, what each covers, how they differ, and why screening the named entries alone still leaves exposure on the table.
A sanctions list is a register, published by a government or a multilateral body, of the individuals, entities, vessels and jurisdictions that regulated firms are legally prohibited or restricted from doing business with. Sanctions screening is the control that checks a customer or a payment against those registers. Because sanctions are issued by many authorities rather than one, screening against a single list is never enough; a compliant program covers the regimes that apply to its customers, its currencies and its correspondent network at the same time.
Which bodies issue the major sanctions lists?
Each of the major regimes is issued by a different authority, applies on a different legal basis, and has its own reach. The table below sets out the ones a globally-facing program most often has to cover. It is not exhaustive, but a program that screens against these regimes covers the large majority of the exposure most regulated firms carry.
| Regime | Issuing body | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| OFAC (United States) | US Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control | The Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list plus sectoral and program-specific lists. Wide extraterritorial reach through US-dollar clearing. |
| UN | UN Security Council | The Consolidated List of individuals and entities subject to Security Council measures. The common baseline most national regimes build on. |
| EU | Council of the European Union | The EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List, binding across member states, covering asset freezes and restrictions. |
| United Kingdom | OFSI, HM Treasury | The UK Consolidated List of financial sanctions targets, maintained separately from the EU since it left. |
| Canada | Global Affairs Canada | Listings under SEMA, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, the UN Act and the Criminal Code, plus FINTRAC ministerial directives. |
| Australia | DFAT | The DFAT Consolidated List, covering both UN Security Council and Australian autonomous sanctions. |
| APAC and others | National regulators | Additional national and regional lists relevant to a firm's customer base and payment corridors. |
Alongside financial sanctions sit trade restriction lists, which govern dual-use and export-controlled goods rather than money. The most common are the US Bureau of Industry and Security lists, the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals, and the Canada Export Controls List. A firm that touches trade finance or physical goods usually needs to screen these as well.
What is the difference between consolidated and list-based sanctions?
It helps to separate two things a sanctions list can express. A designation names a specific person or entity and freezes their assets or bars dealings with them. A sectoral or comprehensive measure restricts a whole category of activity, a sector, or an entire jurisdiction, without necessarily naming every affected party. OFAC, for example, maintains both the named SDN list and separate sectoral programs. This matters for screening because a name-only match against a designation list will not catch a transaction that is prohibited on sectoral or geographic grounds, so a complete program screens the jurisdiction and the activity, not just the counterparty name.
What does a sanctions list actually contain?
A sanctions list is more than a list of people. A single regime typically covers individuals, companies and other entities, vessels and aircraft by identifier, ports and geographic areas, and in some regimes restricted securities. Each entry can carry aliases, transliterations, dates of birth, passport and registration numbers, and known addresses. That structure is what a screening engine matches against, and it is also where false positives originate: a sparse entry with little beyond a common name forces matching to rely on the name alone, which is the least reliable signal available. The richer the list data and the customer record, the more precisely a match can be resolved.
Why isn't screening the named lists enough?
The single most important gap in list-based screening is ownership. Under the 50% Rule, an entity that is majority owned or controlled by a sanctioned party is itself treated as sanctioned, even when that entity appears on no list at all. Sanctioned parties route activity through subsidiaries, holding structures and nominee ownership precisely because those layers do not surface in a direct name screen. Catching this exposure requires mapping deep-tier ownership and close associate networks, not just matching against the published entries. This is the difference between screening that checks a name and screening that resolves the entity behind it, and it is covered in depth in our complete guide to AML screening.
How often do sanctions lists change?
Sanctions lists change on the issuer's timeline, not on a convenient schedule. New designations can be added with little notice, particularly around ministerial directives and geopolitical events, and existing entries are amended or removed as measures are lifted. A party who cleared cleanly last week can be listed today. This is why sanctions screening cannot be a one-time check at onboarding: it has to re-run against refreshed lists so that the picture reflects today's designations. How to set that cadence by customer risk is covered in our ongoing monitoring frequency guide, and the difference between sanctions and PEP screening is set out in sanctions screening vs. PEP screening.
How does BriteBase handle multi-regime sanctions data?
Our data layer maintains sanctions coverage across OFAC, Canada, the EU, the UK, Australia and APAC regimes, including comprehensively sanctioned geographies, vessels, ports and restricted securities, alongside trade restriction lists such as the US BIS lists, the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals, and the Canada Export Controls List. Because this data is structured for agentic entity resolution rather than delivered as raw feeds, deep-tier ownership and the 50% Rule are applied as part of screening rather than left to a manual lookup. The data is available as the risk-intelligence layer behind an existing screening stack, or consumed directly by the BriteBase screening platform.
FAQ
What is a sanctions list?
A sanctions list is an official register, published by a government or a multilateral body, of the individuals, entities, vessels and jurisdictions that regulated firms are legally prohibited or restricted from doing business with. Screening a customer or a payment against these registers is how a firm detects prohibited parties before it deals with them. There is no single global list; the major regimes are issued separately by bodies such as OFAC in the United States, the UN Security Council, the European Union, the UK OFSI, Global Affairs Canada and Australia's DFAT, and they overlap without matching. A list entry usually carries more than a name, including aliases, dates of birth, identifiers and addresses, and can cover vessels, ports and restricted securities as well as people and companies. Because designations are added and removed on the issuer's timeline, a sanctions list is a moving target rather than a fixed reference.
What is the difference between OFAC, EU and UN sanctions?
They are issued by different authorities, apply on different legal bases, and reach different parties. The UN Security Council Consolidated List is the multilateral baseline most national regimes build on. OFAC, run by the US Treasury, maintains the Specially Designated Nationals list plus sectoral programs, and carries wide extraterritorial reach because so much global activity clears in US dollars. The EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List is set by the Council of the European Union and binds member states. Since leaving the EU, the UK maintains its own OFSI Consolidated List separately. The practical consequence is that a party clean on one regime can be listed on another, so screening only one is not enough for a firm with international customers or correspondents. A program covers the regimes relevant to its customer base, its currencies and its payment corridors, rather than assuming one authoritative global list exists.
What is the 50% Rule in sanctions screening?
The 50% Rule is the principle that an entity majority owned or controlled by a sanctioned party is itself treated as sanctioned, even when that entity is not separately named on any list. It exists because sanctioned parties can route activity through subsidiaries, holding companies and nominee ownership that never appear on a watchlist directly, so a name-only screen against the published lists would miss the exposure entirely. Applying the rule means tracing deep-tier ownership and close associate networks to find where a listed party's control reaches, then treating the entities under that control accordingly. It is one of the clearest cases where screening the named entries alone is insufficient: the risk sits in the ownership chain, not in the list. Resolving it consistently is a data and entity-resolution problem, which is why it belongs in the screening layer rather than in a reviewer's manual research.
How often do sanctions lists change?
Sanctions lists change on the issuing authority's own timeline, which does not wait for a vendor's batch schedule. New designations can be added with little warning, especially around ministerial directives and fast-moving geopolitical events, and existing entries are amended or delisted as measures are lifted or corrected. In practice this means a customer who cleared cleanly at onboarding can become a sanctions match days later, purely because a list changed rather than because anything about the customer changed. That is the core reason sanctions screening has to be a continuing control rather than a one-time check: the program re-screens the customer book against refreshed lists so the picture reflects today's designations rather than the day an account opened. How frequently to re-screen a given customer should follow that customer's risk rating, with higher-risk relationships and any previously escalated party re-screened more often.
Do you have to screen against every sanctions list?
Not every list in existence, but every regime that applies to your business, and that is usually more than one. Which regimes apply depends on where your customers are, what currencies you handle, and which correspondents and payment corridors you rely on. A firm clearing US dollars is exposed to OFAC regardless of where it is based; a firm serving EU or UK customers needs those regimes; and the UN baseline underpins most national programs. Screening only a domestic list while serving an international customer base leaves a real gap, because a party clean at home can be listed abroad. The practical answer is to map your actual exposure, cover the regimes that follow from it, and treat trade restriction lists separately if you touch dual-use goods or trade finance. Broader coverage does raise false-positive volume, which is why entity resolution matters as coverage grows.
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