By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, July 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury on Monday purged another 84 companies and people from its 17,000-plus sanctions lists as part of a broader push to streamline sanctions programs and make it easier for banks to go after the most serious terrorist financing schemes.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in May launched a major review of its sanctions programs and lists to remove outdated entries and ease compliance burdens on financial institutions, later announcing
the removal of 76 outdated targets.
The goal is "to ensure Treasury sanctions remain efficient, sharp, and focused, and to remove bloat left over from previous administrations," a Treasury official said, noting over 3,000 names were designated in 2024, compared to just 880 in 2017. "Sanctions are not intended to be a forever tool."
Bessent has also repeatedly highlighted the Trump administration's willingness to impose sanctions on Russia's two biggest oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil — a step the Biden administration eschewed for fear of a further surge in oil prices after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Monday's second tranche of removals from Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List) includes 36 people who have died and associated listings; 33 Iraq-related entities first designated in 1991 or 1992; seven defunct or outdated narcotics listings related to Colombia, and eight disrupted narcotics kingpins.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated listings for 22 individuals and entities to add or clarify missing key identifiers.
Each removal follows a review by other agencies to ensure that it would not harm U.S. foreign policy or national security interests, Treasury said, noting that names could be reinstated, as needed.
Brett Erickson, managing principal with Obsidian Risk Advisors, said the Trump administration's push to streamline the sanctions list made sense and would allow banks to focus on the biggest, legitimate threats.
"At a time where so much movement is happening on the sanctions front, it needs to be as efficient as possible, or risk failures," he said.
The review has focused thus far on older sanctions entries, which sometimes lack identifying information that is now routine for new sanctions actions, including place and date of birth, unique identification numbers, nationality, or gender. Adding more robust data should make compliance screening less burdensome for financial institutions, Treasury said.
OFAC has also identified a small number of duplicate entries on its sanctions lists, where the same person or property was inadvertently included more than once under separate list entries, Treasury said, noting that 18 such sets were resolved with Monday's action.
"To decrease the compliance burden on financial institutions and improve national security outcomes, Treasury is reviewing outdated or hard-to-screen targets," Treasury said in an internal document, adding that the impact of sanctions should be "measured in terms of effect, impact, and national security benefit, not based on the number of names we put on a list."
Treasury on June 29 launched a new online portal that allows sanctioned individuals or firms to request removal from the list, as part of a push to streamline the delisting process.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
