OFAC SDN list screening

Description

The OFAC Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list is the US government's headline sanctions instrument; it identifies individuals, entities, vessels, and aircraft whose property is blocked and with whom US persons are generally prohibited from transacting. Screening against the SDN list is the narrow, US-specific version of the broader sanctions-screening posture: every customer, beneficial owner, and counterparty is matched against the list at onboarding, on transaction, and on each list update. The operational difficulty is in the matching itself. Names on the list often appear in transliterated form, with aliases, partial DOBs, and sometimes only a country and a role; the screening engine has to handle fuzzy matches against transliterated and partially-specified records without producing a review queue so large the review team cannot work it. The standard posture is graduated fuzzy-match thresholds tied to the data quality of the input, a documented false-positive review process with reviewer notes attached to each disposition, and a blocking procedure that freezes funds and files the OFAC blocking report within the regulatory window when a confirmed match is found. Underscreening exposes the operator to OFAC penalties; overscreening is itself a customer-experience problem that has drawn enforcement attention in fair-banking contexts.

Applicability

Applies when: markets include US.

How predicates are evaluated

Required by (2 regulations)

• US OFAC

  31 CFR Part 501 — SDN List + Sectoral Sanctions Identifications + Foreign Sanctions Evaders + Non-SDN Iranian Sanctions; updated multiple times per week; the 50% Rule extends sanctions to entities owned 50%+ in aggregate by SDNs.

  31 CFR Part 501

• Other Sanctions

  Consolidated multilateral screening — the SDN-equivalent on each national framework (DFAT Consolidated List, Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List, METI Notices, MAS TFS lists, SECO Sanctions Search) consumed via aggregator services.

  Consolidated multilateral screening

Fulfilled by (3)

• comply-advantage · full · medium effort · $$
• ofac-search · full · low effort · $
• In-house build · high effort

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• OFAC SDN screening logs
• blocked-property reports
• OFAC license file