OFAC SDN Screening
Screen any individual, company, or entity against the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list and all other US Treasury sanctions programs. Instant results with a compliance-ready PDF report.
Understanding OFAC and the SDN List
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is an agency of the US Department of the Treasury responsible for administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions programs. OFAC sanctions are among the most far-reaching in the world because they apply to all US persons and, in many cases, to non-US persons who have a nexus to the US financial system.
The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list is OFAC's primary sanctions list. Persons and entities on the SDN list have their assets blocked (frozen), and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them. The SDN list includes individuals and companies associated with sanctioned countries and regimes, terrorist organisations, narcotics trafficking, weapons proliferation, and other threats to US national security.
Beyond the SDN list, OFAC maintains several other sanctions lists including the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) List, the Non-SDN Menu-Based Sanctions List (NS-MBS), the Foreign Sanctions Evaders (FSE) List, and country-specific lists. An effective OFAC compliance programme must screen against all of these programs, not just the SDN list alone.
OFAC Compliance for UAE and GCC Businesses
UAE-based businesses are increasingly subject to OFAC jurisdiction, particularly those operating in international trade, financial services, and commodities. The UAE Central Bank has strengthened its own AML/CFT framework in alignment with FATF standards, and expects regulated entities to maintain screening programmes that cover major international sanctions lists including OFAC.
Any transaction denominated in US dollars, routed through a US correspondent bank, or involving US-origin goods or technology can create OFAC jurisdiction — even when neither party to the transaction is a US person. This means that a UAE company paying a supplier in USD, or a GCC bank processing a cross-border wire transfer through New York, must ensure that no party to the transaction appears on OFAC sanctions lists.
OFAC enforcement actions against non-US companies have increased significantly. In recent years, OFAC has imposed penalties on banks, shipping companies, and trading firms outside the US for sanctions violations involving the US financial system. For UAE free zone companies, this risk is particularly acute given the volume of USD-denominated international trade flowing through Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other GCC commercial centres.
OFAC Penalties and Enforcement
OFAC operates a strict liability regime — meaning that a violation can result in penalties even if the violating party did not know that the transaction involved a sanctioned person. However, OFAC considers several factors when determining the appropriate enforcement response, including the existence and adequacy of the violator's compliance programme, whether the violation was voluntarily self-disclosed, and the degree of wilfulness.
Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), criminal penalties can reach USD 1 million and 20 years' imprisonment per wilful violation. Civil monetary penalties can exceed USD 300,000 per violation, or twice the value of the underlying transaction, whichever is greater. OFAC publishes all enforcement actions on its enforcement page, and these actions are frequently covered by financial media — compounding the reputational damage.
OFAC has published A Framework for OFAC Compliance Commitments, which outlines the five essential components of an effective sanctions compliance programme: management commitment, risk assessment, internal controls, testing and auditing, and training. Sanctions screening is a core element of the internal controls component.
How Wirestork OFAC Screening Works
Wirestork's screening platform queries the OFAC SDN list and all subsidiary OFAC sanctions programs in real time. The engine uses fuzzy name matching to account for transliteration differences, name order variations, and aliases — critical for Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and other non-Latin script names that can be romanised in multiple ways.
Each result includes a match confidence score, the specific OFAC programme under which the entity is designated, known aliases, and associated country information. The full compliance-ready PDF report provides a complete audit trail including the screening timestamp, databases queried, and detailed match data — suitable for regulatory filing and internal compliance records.