OFAC

Sanctions

Office of Foreign Assets Control — US Treasury agency administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions.

Sources

1. US Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control — About OFAC ofac.treasury.gov accessed 22 September 2026

OFAC’s own account of its origin: it “was formally created in December 1950, following the entry of China into the Korean War, when President Truman declared a national emergency and blocked all Chinese and North Korean assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction.” The mechanism in that sentence — a declared emergency and a block on assets — is still the model for how US sanctions programmes are built.

Scope of this source: OFAC’s page cited gives its history, not a statement of its current powers, so the description of what OFAC does in the answer above is this lexicon’s summary.

Related terms

• AML Compliance
• Denied Party Screening
• Dual Use Goods
• End User Certificate
• EU Sanctions
• FATF

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).