Free UK Sanctions Sanctions Check

The UK Sanctions List is the consolidated list of designated persons maintained by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of HM Treasury. After Brexit, the UK built its own autonomous sanctions regime under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. The list went live as a standalone instrument on 31 December 2020.

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.