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1. What is OFAC and what does it do?  

Answer

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign jurisdictions and regimes, as well as individuals and entities engaging in harmful activity, such as terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, weapons of mass destruction proliferators, and other malign actors, in response to threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. OFAC sanctions take various forms, from blocking the property of specific individuals and entities to broadly prohibiting transactions involving an entire country or geographic region, such as through a trade embargo or prohibitions related to particular sectors of a country’s economy.

Read more about OFAC’s history on the About OFAC page on OFAC’s website.

Date Updated: August 21, 2024.

Date Released
September 10, 2002