One of my favorite things to see is individuals and/or entities removed from the blocked persons list administered by the United States Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”). However, it’s not because I like to see alleged wrong doers exonerated of their status as Specially Designated Nationals (“SDN”). Rather, it gives me hope in the system they currently have in place for removals. I represent individuals who are on the OFAC SDN list, and sometimes I wonder how serious of consideration my petitions for removal get. This concern only grew when I was told by some individuals with personal inside knowledge of OFAC, that OFAC is geared towards designation not removal, and that requests for removal can sit on desks for years without being read.

However, if this was the case before then it surely has been changing. I have noticed more and more announcements of removals coming from OFAC within the past 9 months. While there is undeniably far more designations than removals, then number of removals has certainly increased. This year already 89 individuals and entities have been removed from the SDN list. Compare that with 2008 when only 63 individuals and entities were removed for the entire year and the trend becomes apparent. Another trend becomes apparent as well; most of the removals have been designees placed on the list by the counter narcotics sanctions programs.

This is likely due in part to the large number of designations that have occurred this year under that program. I imagine that OFAC’s desire to aggressively enforce that particular sanctions program has resulted in a number of designations that might have lacked proper evidence for designations. As I have seen in the past OFAC has on occassion pulled the trigger too early on a designation and it resulted in an individual on that list that maybe shouldn’t have been.

However, the point here is not to chastise OFAC for makiing mistakes, it’s to show that they do take removals seriously and it’s evident by the number of removals that have occurred this year. This is good for those on the OFAC SDN list it shows that there is a process and an opportunity for a blocked person to be removed from the list.

The author of this blog is Erich Ferrari, an attorney specializing in OFAC litigation. If you have any questions please contact him at 202-280-6370 at 202-351-6161 or ferrari@ferrari-legal.com.