Free Australia DFAT Sanctions Check

The Consolidated List is Australia's central sanctions register, maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It pulls together everyone designated under Australia's two sanctions regimes: the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945 (which gives effect to UN Security Council resolutions) and the Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011 (which underpins Australia's independent sanctions decisions).

The autonomous regime has expanded significantly since 2021, when Australia introduced its own thematic Magnitsky-style sanctions covering serious human rights violations, serious corruption, malicious cyber activity, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Russia-related designations grew sharply in 2022 and have been refreshed regularly since.

Australian sanctions law applies to: all Australian citizens (wherever located in the world); all persons physically present in Australia; every body corporate incorporated under Australian law (including foreign branches); and all activity that takes place in Australian territory. AUD-clearing exposure pulls in non-Australian banks maintaining correspondent relationships.

Sanctions offences in Australia are serious: criminal penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment for individuals and substantial fines for bodies corporate. The Australian Sanctions Office, sitting inside DFAT, is responsible for administration, licensing, and enforcement.

Around 7,000 individuals and entities, with the majority falling under the Russia, Iran, Syria, and DPRK regimes. The Consolidated List entry for each designation includes the legal basis (UN or autonomous), the designating instrument, identifiers, and the type of restriction (targeted financial sanctions, travel ban, or both).

Targeted financial sanctions are the operational core of the regime. Anyone holding or controlling assets owned by a listed person must freeze them, must not deal with them, and must not make any asset available to them — directly or indirectly. Travel bans operate independently and are administered through the Department of Home Affairs rather than DFAT, but they apply to the same designated population.

Australia coordinates closely with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand on sanctions policy. In practice this means most major Australian designations have a near-equivalent on at least one of the partner lists — and most of the post-2022 Russia designations were rolled out across the Five Eyes within days of one another. There is real divergence around the edges, however: Australia is sometimes faster to designate in the Indo-Pacific theatre, and slower on cyber- and corruption-themed packages where the US tends to lead.

DFAT updates the Consolidated List as designations change. There is no fixed cadence — sometimes weeks pass without an update, sometimes multiple changes land in the same week. The official source is the DFAT Consolidated List page on dfat.gov.au, published as a machine-readable XLSX. SanctScan refreshes the dataset daily.

Confirm the identifiers, then either freeze the asset, refuse the transaction, or — if you need to engage with the listed party for a legitimate reason — apply for a sanctions permit through the Australian Sanctions Office. Permit applications are case-by-case; humanitarian, legal, and pre-existing contractual obligations are the most common bases for issuance.

Reporting obligations under Australian sanctions law fall on holders of frozen assets and on certain regulated sectors. AUSTRAC reporting for suspect transactions runs in parallel and may also be triggered when a sanctions issue intersects with money laundering or terrorism financing concerns.