OFAC SDN List: Listed Entries

## What this measures

The number of entries on the U.S. Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (OFAC SDN List), at the end of each month and, for the current month, on the latest day read.

## Why it matters

Sanctions lists are where governments name the people, companies, ships and aircraft their banks and businesses must not deal with. The size of a list and how fast it grows show how heavily a government is using sanctions, and anyone screening customers, suppliers or counterparties works against these lists.

## How to read it

Higher means more entries in force. Jumps come in waves when a new programme starts or a large action lands (Russia from February 2022); falls come when a programme ends or entries are delisted in bulk.

## 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. A count says nothing about how strict a measure is: an asset freeze, a travel ban and a ban on one kind of trade each count as one entry. Ownership rules (OFAC's 50 percent rule and its UK and EU equivalents) extend sanctions to companies that are never listed by name.

## History

From January 2005. Until September 2023 the series is rebuilt from OFAC's yearly change files (treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnewYY.txt), counting each "entries have been added/removed" section with alias cross-references grouped into one entry, and anchored to the number of entries in archived copies of OFAC's own sdn.csv at 12 dates from December 2004 to January 2024: between anchors the rebuilt change was within 50 entries of OFAC's. From October 2023 it is counted entry by entry from OFAC's files and delta files. Earlier files are prose and are not used.

## 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.