PLEASE NOTE: OFAC amended this notice on February 25, 2015 by issuing this announcement.
In order to make it easier to comply with OFAC's sanctions regulations, the office is now offering all of its non-SDN sanctions lists (including the Non-SDN Palestinian Legislative Council List "NS-PLC List," the Part 561 List, the Non-SDN Iran Sanctions Act List "NS-ISA List," the Foreign Sanctions Evaders List "FSE List," the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List "SSI List," and the List of Persons Identified as Blocked Solely Pursuant to Executive Order 13599 "the 13599 List") in a consolidated set of data files "the Consolidated Sanctions List." These consolidated files comply with all of OFAC's existing data standards. While the consolidated sanctions list data files are not part of OFAC's list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons "the SDN List," some of the records in these consolidated files may also appear on the SDN List. Click here for information about the Consolidated Sanctions List.
The goal of this consolidation effort is to reduce the number of list-related files that must be downloaded in order to maintain an automated sanctions screening program. In the future, if OFAC creates a new sanctions list where the action required of a U.S. person does not necessarily entail blocking, the office will add the new data associated with that list to these consolidated data files if appropriate. Another goal of this effort is to ensure that all sanctions list records are included in OFAC’s Sanctions List Search tool. As of this announcement all of OFAC’s lists are now available in Sanctions List Search.
In approximately 6 months, OFAC will cease issuing independent data files for the FSE List, the SSI List and the NS-PLC List. During the transition period, OFAC will produce these data on both the Consolidated Sanctions List and on the appropriate individual lists. The new Consolidated Sanctions List data files can be accessed on this page. In addition, the Consolidated Sanctions List data files are available on OFAC’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site at ftp://ofacftp.treas.gov in a folder called, “consolidated_list.” Please visit the Consolidated Sanctions List Specification file for the information about data file nomenclature, column headers and field widths. The XSD specification file for the XML version of the Consolidated Sanctions List may be found here.
OFAC will continue to provide and update independent human readable (.pdf and .txt) versions of the FSE, SSI, NS-ISA, NS-PLC and Part 561 lists and their respective archive of changes files. These file formats will not be affected by the creation of the consolidated data files and will continue to be available even after the transition period.
Some of OFAC’s non-SDN list products have never been offered in a data format before. Other non-SDN lists have not been updated recently and were produced by older information systems. As such, OFAC’s list consolidation effort has resulted in some minor administrative changes to the non-SDN list data. Below is a list of unique ID numbers (UIDs) that correspond to records that were modified during the consolidation.
For the Non-SDN Palestinian Legislative Counsel (NS-PLC) List:
An erroneous semicolon at the end of the following records has been removed: 9682, 9713, 9714, 9715, and 9716.
An address parsing error has been corrected for record 9646.
Certain versions of the NS-PLC delimited files appeared to be missing an alias (alias UID 9150) that was a transcription of the primary PLC record (UID 9639).
All NS-PLC records will appear in the consolidated list data format.
For the List of Foreign Financial Institutions Subject to Part 561 (Part 561 List)
The Part 561 List has never been offered in a data format before. This was due to the fact that each Part 561 record requires special, context-based treatment. In order to ensure that users of the consolidated list know how to treat a true hit on a 561 record, OFAC is adding the specific treatment text to the remarks field of all 561 records.
All Part 561 List records will appear in the consolidated list data format.
For the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) List:
In order to differentiate records that appear on the ISA list from those that do not appear on the SDN list, OFAC recently renamed the stand-alone ISA list. It is now called the Non-SDN ISA list or NS-ISA List.
The NS-ISA List has never been offered in a data format before. In order to ensure that users of the consolidated list know how to treat a true hit on a NS-ISA record, OFAC recently added specific treatment text to the remarks field of all NS-ISA records.
All NS-ISA records will appear in the consolidated list data format.
For the Foreign Sanctions Evaders (FSE) List:
An erroneous comma in the addresses of the following records has been removed: 16545 (address UID 25004) and 16549 (address UID 25021).
All FSE records will appear in the consolidated list data format.
Upgrade to Sanctions List Search Tool:
OFAC has upgraded its Sanctions List Search tool to provide the users the ability to search for a name on the SDN List, on the Consolidated List, or on both lists simultaneously. By incorporating the Consolidated List, users will be able to look for potential name matches on the SSI, FSE, NS-PLC, NS-ISA and Part 561 lists. Sanctions List Search previously only included the SDN and FSE lists. Please see the related FAQs for additional information on algorithms, scoring, and other technical details regarding Sanctions List Search.