OFAC Sanctions Lists: New Designations per Month

## What this measures

The number of entries added to the U.S. Treasury's OFAC lists, the SDN List and the Consolidated (non-SDN) list together, each entity once in each month, by the designation date the list records. The current month counts designations so far.

## Why it matters

New designations are the most direct read of sanctions activity: they rise when a government opens a new front (a new programme, a crackdown on a network or a fleet of tankers) and fall in quiet periods.

## How to read it

Each bar is one month. Large single months are usually one government action that names hundreds of entries at once. Read with the listed total (sanctions.listed.ofac), which also reflects removals.

## What it does not say

An entry is one listed person, entity, vessel or aircraft, counted once however many names, addresses or programmes it carries. Across lists nothing is matched (each list uses its own identifiers), so a person on the U.S., UK and EU lists counts once on each. An entry moved from one programme to another, or given new names or addresses, is not a new designation. A date is the list's own: the UK and EU record the date of the original designation, so an entry carried over from an older regime keeps its old date.

## History

From October 2023, when OFAC's delta files begin: from then on every removal is known with its date. Earlier months are not shown because they would count only entries still listed later.

## Source

U.S. Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Sanctions List Service: SDN_ENHANCED.XML and CONS_ENHANCED.XML (sanctionslist.ofac.treas.gov), read daily, with OFAC's delta files for removal dates. A U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105). OFAC publishes no counts; Palanor counts entries.