Find the authority that listed you and the contact point for requesting removal, and learn which authorities are known to leave stale records behind.
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Find the authority that listed you and the contact point for requesting removal, and learn which authorities are known to leave stale records behind.
The data presented on OpenSanctions is not created by an editorial staff. It is aggregated from a variety of sources, most of which are national governments or international organizations. We reproduce their records and do not edit them, so a listing can only be removed by the authority that published it.
If you are listed on a sanctions list or watchlist and wish to be removed, most authorities offer a complaint or petition mechanism. The table lists the contact points we know of:
| Jurisdiction | Authority | Contact point |
|---|---|---|
| United Nations | UN Security Council | Ombudsperson and focal point for de-listing |
| United States | Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), US Treasury | Filing a petition for removal from an OFAC list |
| United States | General Services Administration (GSA), SAM.gov exclusions | SAM.gov contact page and the Federal Service Desk |
| United Kingdom | Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) | How to seek variation or revocation of a sanctions designation |
| European Union | Council of the European Union, via the European External Action Service | EU sanctions: requesting a review of a listing |
| Australia | Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) | Requests to be de-listed |
| INTERPOL | Commission for the Control of INTERPOL's Files (CCF) | Requesting access to or deletion of data |
Once the authority has processed a removal, allow up to one week for the information to disappear from OpenSanctions. If your profile shows records from more than one data source, each source has to remove you separately.
Some authorities do not reliably remove records when the underlying reason for a listing has lapsed. This section documents the patterns we have seen repeatedly, so that people affected can go directly to the right place.
The US General Services Administration (GSA) runs the System for Award Management (SAM.gov). Part of SAM is the Exclusions list, the register of people and companies that US federal agencies may not award contracts, grants or other assistance to. Most entries are debarments or suspensions by an individual agency. A separate class of entries mirrors other government watchlists: when the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designates someone on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, a matching exclusion record is created in SAM. These records name OFAC as the excluding agency and carry the exclusion program "Reciprocal".
When OFAC delists a person (whether because a petition for removal succeeded or a program was ended), the SDN list is updated the same day. The mirrored SAM record, however, is not reliably deleted, and some reciprocal OFAC exclusions stay in SAM for an extended period after OFAC has removed the designation. The GSA does not appear to reconcile the two lists systematically, and the person affected typically does not know the second record exists, because they only ever dealt with OFAC.
OpenSanctions crawls both sources. When OFAC delists someone, their OFAC-sourced data leaves our database at the next update. If a stale SAM record survives, the person keeps a profile on OpenSanctions that shows a US federal exclusion record from the US SAM Procurement Exclusions dataset, tagged as a debarment rather than a sanction, naming OFAC as the excluding agency because that is what SAM publishes. That profile is accurate, and we cannot suppress it: publishing something other than what the GSA publishes would put every customer relying on our data for compliance out of step with the official register.
If you are a person or entity affected by this, contact the GSA through the SAM.gov contact page or open a ticket with the Federal Service Desk, provide your OFAC delisting confirmation, and ask for the reciprocal exclusion record to be removed. Once the GSA deletes the record, it disappears from OpenSanctions automatically at the next daily update of the dataset.