One of the stranger sanctions regimes maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) is the Former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor program. For one, it’s been over a decade since there was a Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor. Second, Charles Taylor has been detained at The Hague on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges since 2006; in 2012 he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. But as long as the U.N. maintained individual asset freezes and travel bans under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1521, the United States was obligated to maintain its own sanctions.

That obligation no longer exists however. On September 2, the Security Council voted to terminate all individual 1521 designations, while maintaining the arms embargo targeting Liberia.

It obviously remains to be seen how OFAC will respond to this development. While there does not seem to be a compelling policy justification for keeping the Liberia sanctions program in place, optics may prevent any action at least in the immediate future. I have a very hard time believing OFAC is eager for headlines like “U.S. Removes Sanctions on Mass Murderer Charles Taylor, Lord of War Viktor Bout.”    Legal arguments circling back to the U.N.’s sanctions lifting are unlikely to deflect much.

The position of the Liberian government itself may help OFAC keep the program in place despite the end of U.N. sanctions. According to Foreign Minister Augustine Ngafuan, Liberia is in favor of taking people off the list, but that there should be serious reviews to ensure that if a designation remains, there is adequate reasoning behind it:

“The general government position to the U.N. has been that the sanction list, travel ban and assets freeze list should not be kept in full, that relevant information needs to be evaluated and to the extent that information will point to the lifting of sanctions or a ban on an individual, that the UN should do so. Liberia wants all its citizens and partners to be contributive of the peace and progress of the nation,”

“What we say is that it is not helpful to keep these things stuck in history and not review them because people can transition. So we say that if someone has transitioned in attitude from negative to positive, action should be taken to reflect that transition,”

While the complete end to the Liberia sanctions program seems doubtful, it’s somewhat hard to believe that some response from OFAC will not take place in the coming weeks/months. FM Ngafuan’s statements clearly indicate that the Liberian government believes that there are individuals who remain on the list who do not deserve to be there, though he’s probably not referring to Viktor Bout.

Disclosure: Ferrari & Associates P.C., where I serve as a Policy Adviser, retains clients seeking removal of their Former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor Program designation.