OFAC Counter-Narcotics Sanctions

Sanctions targeting drug trafficking organizations, their leaders, and financial facilitators under the Kingpin Act and EO 14059.

TL;DR

TL;DR: OFAC counter-narcotics sanctions block drug trafficking organizations and the people and networks that finance them, using the Kingpin Act and Executive Order 14059.

What they target

The counter-narcotics program targets drug trafficking organizations, their leadership, and the financial facilitators who move their money. The Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, known as the Kingpin Act, authorizes designations, and Executive Order 14059 expanded authority to cover the broader trafficking and fentanyl supply chain. Designated parties are added to the SDN List. Because trafficking networks rely on layers of intermediaries, screening a direct counterparty is not enough; the wallet and the parties behind it must be checked.

Why facilitators matter

Modern trafficking networks depend on payment infrastructure, so sanctions increasingly focus on the wallets, exchangers, and intermediaries that move funds. A payer that routes money to a designated facilitator faces the same strict liability as one paying a trafficker directly: intent is not required, and civil penalties start at $356,000 per violation. The program also illustrates why wallet screening matters as much as name screening for crypto flows.

Screening for agent payments

Agent payment flows touch these risks through crypto. sanctionsai.dev screens 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets along with 19,218 SDN names across 16 jurisdictions, synced hourly. An agent that checks a wallet before paying receives ALLOW or BLOCK, so it does not unknowingly fund a designated network through a facilitator address. A clean screen on every hop is the only reliable defense.