HM Treasury and the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) have published an overview comparing the approaches of the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and OFSI to economic sanctions.
Similarities between the OFAC and OFSI approaches included:
- Operating list-based systems – OFAC uses Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list and OFSI uses the UK Sanctions list (maintained by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office).
- Asset restriction concepts – both frameworks restrict access to assets, with OFAC “blocking” property and OFSI “freezing” assets.
- General targets and objectives – both regimes target threat actors, individuals / entities, and countries / regimes.
Key differences between the OFAC and OFSI approaches included:
- Types of sanctions available – OFAC is generally broader in sanction availability, with blocking/non-blocking, sectoral, government blocking, jurisdiction-based and secondary sanctions available, meanwhile OFSI is generally more narrowly focused.
- Extraterritorial reach – OFAC has a stronger global reach, requiring compliance from all US and non-US persons via secondary sanctions and or certain sanctions prohibitions, meanwhile OFSI applies to all UK persons and non-UK persons with a UK nexus.
Overall, both regimes are similar in structure, purpose and compliance, with differences falling in each regimes complexity of available sanctions, extraterritorial tools and breadth of scope.