OFAC sanctions, in three minutes
A simple explainer for clients who keep meaning to ask but haven't.
OFAC is the US Treasury's sanctions arm.
It maintains lists of people, companies, and ships you are not permitted to do business with under US jurisdiction. That includes anyone using a US bank, anyone using a US-correspondent bank, anyone holding any USD, anyone running a US-based exchange. Which is most exchanges.
Why we watch it for you.
Even if you have no obvious touch point with a sanctioned party, you might have one through a bank, a counterparty, a service provider you weren't tracking. When the list updates we cross-reference against everyone on your file. If something pings, you hear from us before the bank does.
Adjacency matters more than you'd think.
Most of our hits over the past year have been adjacency hits, not the client themselves. A small counterparty, a real estate co-owner, a board client they share with someone newly listed. Those are the ones that catch people off guard.