Office of Foreign Assets Control
agency of the United States Department of the Treasury
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives. Under presidential national emergency powers, OFAC carries out its activities against foreign governments, organizations (including terrorist groups and drug cartels), and individuals deemed a threat to U.S. national security.
Founded in 1950 as the Division of Foreign Assets Control, since 2004 OFAC has operated under the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence within the Treasury Department. It is primarily composed of intelligence targeters and lawyers. While many of OFAC's targets are broadly set by the White House, most individual cases are developed as a result of investigations by OFAC's Office of Global Targeting (OGT).
Sometimes described as one of the "most powerful yet unknown" government agencies, OFAC has the power to levy significant penalties against entities that defy its directives, including imposing fines, freezing assets, and barring parties from operating in the U.S.
History
Involvement of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in economic sanctions against foreign states dates to the War of 1812, when Secretary Albert Gallatin administered sanctions against the United Kingdom in retaliation for the impressment of American sailors.
Predecessor agencies of the Division of Foreign Assets Control include Foreign Funds Control (FFC), which existed from 1940 to 1947, and the Office of International Finance (1947 to 1950). FFC was established by Executive Order 8389 as a unit of the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury on April 10, 1940. The authority to establish FFC was derived from the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917.
The public source identifies “Office of Foreign Assets Control” as agency of the United States Department of the Treasury. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Office, Foreign and Assets.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1620015. VIAF identifies the subject as 145444991. The Library of Congress control number is n82163173. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2004, 1812 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Office of Foreign Assets Control” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.