Frequently Asked Questions

Sanctions List Search will first look for potential matches based on the first letter of  input search terms and by checking for matches at least 50% or more similar based on edit distance (edit distance is the minimum number of operations required to transform the input string of characters into… Read more

OFAC cannot make such a recommendation because each search has its own unique set of facts surrounding it. Users of Sanctions List Search must make their own match threshold determinations based upon their own internal risk assessments and established compliance …

Only the name field influences the score. …

Only the name field uses the fuzzy searching logic. …

Sanctions List Search is a free tool provided by OFAC to assist the public in complying with sanctions programs. It is intended to be used by individual users that are looking for potential matches on OFAC's sanctions lists. It should not be utilized by automated systems that are configured to… Read more

Sanctions List Search will look for and return potential matches from the  Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Consolidated Sanctions Lists . The user can look under the List column to see which list(s) a potential match is on. Please see the Consolidated List page for more detailed… Read more

OFAC's Sanctions List Search is updated frequently and always contains the latest versions of OFAC's sanctions lists. Like OFAC's other list-related publications, Sanctions List Search does not contain historical information. Names that have been removed from OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals (… Read more

Sanctions List Search’s ID field uses exact character matching to provide users with a result. In order to receive the broadest number of results, users should conduct ID field searches both with and without any non-alphanumeric …

Yes. OFAC's SDN list is available in XML, fixed-field and delimited formats that can be imported into a variety of software programs. …

OFAC publishes the SDN data in a comma separated values format (CSV). This format is recognized by Excel and other spreadsheet programs and can be imported into spreadsheet format by simply opening the file in your default spreadsheet …