Free UK Sanctions Sanctions Check

The UK Sanctions List is the consolidated list of designated persons published by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of HM Treasury, administers financial sanctions enforcement. After Brexit, the UK built its own autonomous sanctions regime under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018; the UK Sanctions List was first published on 6 July 2020 and became the operative legal basis at the end of the transition period (31 December 2020). As of 28 January 2026, the older OFSI Consolidated List of Asset Freeze Targets was retired — the UK Sanctions List is now the single authoritative source for all UK designations.

The UK list initially mirrored EU and UN designations, but has diverged over time. The UK has its own Magnitsky-style human rights regime (the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020), its own cyber and chemical weapons regimes, and a Russia regime that overlaps heavily with the EU's but is not identical.

UK sanctions apply to all UK persons (anywhere in the world) and to any person or activity within UK territory or UK territorial waters. A "UK person" includes British citizens and any entity incorporated or constituted under the law of any part of the United Kingdom, including their branches and subsidiaries.

Sterling-clearing exposure pulls in non-UK banks. UK financial institutions handling correspondent flows for foreign banks expect their counterparties to be screening to UK standards. And the OFSI reporting obligation — relevant institutions must report any knowledge or suspicion of a sanctions breach — extends across UK financial services, legal services, accountancy, and several other regulated sectors.

Since June 2022, OFSI has had the power to impose monetary penalties on a strict liability basis. You no longer have to know or suspect that your counterparty is sanctioned to be liable. This was a deliberate shift after several enforcement cases stalled on proving knowledge.

Practically, that means your screening processes have to be defensible on their own merits. "Our analyst missed it" no longer protects you — the question is whether your controls were proportionate to the risk. Documented screening, ownership-chain checks, and continuous monitoring are the operational baseline.

OFSI publishes updates several times per week. The complete list is available as a daily-refreshed CSV and ODS download from gov.uk, and individual financial sanctions notices are published when there is a material change to a regime. SanctScan ingests the consolidated UK list daily.

Confirm the match against the entry's date of birth, nationality, and other identifiers. If the match holds, freeze the funds or economic resources, refrain from making any economic resource available, and report to OFSI as soon as practicable. The reporting obligation attaches to relevant firms: banks, money service businesses, lawyers, accountants, and others listed in the regulations.

If you need to deal with a sanctioned party (for example, to settle a pre-existing contract), you will need a specific licence from OFSI. The licence application process is documented on gov.uk; turnaround times vary by regime, with Russia and Belarus applications generally the slowest given the volume of demand since 2022.

The fastest way to check a name against the UK sanctions list is to use the search above. SanctScan screens against the FCDO's UK Sanctions List with the same fuzzy matching it applies to OFAC, EU and UN data. The list itself is also available as a regularly refreshed CSV, ODS, ODT, XML, HTML, PDF and TXT download from gov.uk if you want to run checks in a spreadsheet or against your own infrastructure.

For ongoing programmes (onboarding flows, payment screening, or continuous monitoring of an existing book of customers), what you actually want is API access plus rescreening on every list update. The OFSI list changes several times per week. A customer who was clean at onboarding can be designated months later, and a point-in-time check gives you no protection after the relationship has started. SanctScan's Solo plan at $19/month covers daily continuous monitoring across the UK list and every other major sanctions list; Starter at $39/month adds API and webhook integration.

If you are a "relevant firm" — a UK financial institution, money service business, law firm, accountancy practice, estate agent, casino, art-market participant or letting agency — you have a positive obligation to report to OFSI as soon as practicable when you know or suspect a person is a designated person, or you hold their funds or economic resources. There is no fixed deadline expressed in days, but "as soon as practicable" is interpreted strictly.

OFSI also publishes general licences for common scenarios (legal fees, humanitarian payments, certain energy-related Russian transactions), and individual specific licences for case-by-case authorisations. The OFSI annual review publishes anonymised case data on enforcement outcomes, which is the closest thing to public guidance on what penalties look like in practice.

A short side-by-side for UK compliance officers who also handle US exposure. The UK list is administered by OFSI under HM Treasury. OFAC sits inside the US Department of the Treasury. Both regimes now operate strict liability for civil penalties (in the UK since June 2022, in the US for decades). Both apply extraterritorially: UK sanctions to UK persons anywhere; OFAC sanctions to US persons anywhere plus anyone whose transactions clear in US dollars.

The most important practical difference is content. The UK Russia regime overlaps heavily with EU and US measures but is not identical; the UK has its own Magnitsky framework that doesn't always mirror the US one. Programmes that screen only OFAC and assume the UK list is covered will miss UK-only designations, and vice versa. Screening both, plus EU and UN, is what most firms with cross-border exposure end up running.