OFAC Sanctions Delistings Increasingly Lacking Transparency, Former Official Says
Delisting decisions at the Office of Foreign Assets Control are increasingly being driven by outside voices, leading to removals that lack transparency and interagency discussion, a former OFAC official said.
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Justyna Gudzowska, a former legal adviser to OFAC and now the executive director at The Sentry, an organization investigating corruption and human rights violations, said she’s seeing a rise in delistings under the Trump administration that appear to be "politicized.” She specifically pointed to the administration’s decision earlier this year to revoke sanctions against allies of the Myanmar military regime (see 2507250004), which a U.N. official called “unconscionable.”
Gudzowska, speaking during an event last week hosted by the advocacy group Human Rights First, noted that OFAC gave no reason for the delistings. “We don't know why these delistings happened,” she said. “They were simply announced.”
The designations were originally imposed against some people and companies for helping the country’s military buy weapons used for violence against Myanmar citizens, OFAC said at the time. The Trump administration removed the sanctions two weeks after Myanmar's ruling junta reportedly requested the delistings in a letter praising Trump. The Trump administration has said the delisting decision was unrelated to the letter.
Tjasa Feher, an EU advocacy manager for the European Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, also pointed to the Trump administration’s delisting in April of Hungarian official Antal Rogan, who was sanctioned in January for corruption (see 2504170045). OFAC also gave no reason for Rogan’s delisting, which was criticized by Senate Democrats (see 2504180050).
“It's not wrong when sanctions are removed due to genuine reform, correction of behavior or change in circumstances, and when these decisions are principled and credible. But that's not what happened here,” said Feher, who said Rogan for years has been the primary driver of Hungary’s system of corruption, and that hasn’t changed after the delisting. “This delisting sent a message, in a way, to enforce the perception that sanctions are not tools of accountability, but of politics. [They are] imposed one day and then reversed the next.”
Gudzowska, who worked on delisting issues at OFAC during the Obama administration, said those decisions usually included interagency discussions and rarely involved senior leadership. Although she said high-profile sanctions targets have always been able to hire lobbyists to influence the administration or lawyers to fight against their designation, officials from “various parts of the U.S. government” still took their time to examine evidence to determine if the removal was warranted.
But Gudzowska said that may be changing.
“I do think what is categorically different in what we're seeing right now is really the blatant nature of these political moves and political delistings,” she said, adding that “lobbyists, the donations, the jamming things through, the lack of interagency consultation -- it’s really different than what I've seen in the past.”
An OFAC spokesperson didn't comment, and a White House spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.
Charity Ryerson, executive director and founder of the Corporate Accountability Lab, also said she is seeing lobbying influence decisions related to foreign companies subject to withhold release orders by CBP, which the agency can impose to restrict imports from a business accused of forced labor. After CBP earlier this year modified a WRO for Dominican Republic sugar company Central Romana, it was reported that Central Romana’s affiliate had donated $1 million to the Make America Great Again political action committee in 2024 and $413,000 to the Republican National Committee (see 2503190071). The corporation also donated smaller sums to Democrats.
“It makes us wonder, what does this say to other companies that are targeted with withhold release orders?” Ryerson said. “It's much cheaper for them to make political donations to Trump and his PACs … than it is to actually remediate long-standing, complex forced labor.”
Gudzowska noted that OFAC has historically “always fought back” against delisting petitions, including in U.S. courts, and they have won “a lot” of those cases. But she questioned whether OFAC will continue to “go to bat to defend designations in the same way that they have in the past.”
“What really, really concerns me right now is that OFAC is no longer willing to do that for whatever reason, and this is going to … open the floodgates with everyone under the sun that has the money, hiring lawyers and seeking to get delisted and trying to find lobbyists close to the administration.”
Asked whether Congress can push OFAC to be more transparent, Gudzowska said congressional oversight is “always helpful.” But she also said that oversight may need to go further than a letter to the White House. “I think, in this administration, that is probably not that effective,” she said.
Gudzowska said Congress could consider passing a bill to require OFAC to provide reasons for each delisting decision so U.S. administrations are “on record” for why they’re removing a set of sanctions. “Right now, delistings are even more opaque than sanctions listings,” she said. “No one knows what's happening, and we're left kind of guessing and reading the tea leaves and connecting the dots based on what we have heard.”
But Gudzowska also said getting Congress involved, especially if it codifies a new delisting process, could make the process more difficult for people who are truly wrongly sanctioned. “It's a double-edged sword,” she said.