By Timothy Gardner and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday it is taking 76 names and entities off a sanctions blacklist, more than half being people who have died, a move it said would help Washington focus on high-risk targets.
The department is removing entities from the Specially Designated Nationals list, including 39 deceased people, 14 vessels that no longer operate, and 13 defunct companies.
The department said it had heard from businesses that complained about being forced to spend significant resources to screen targets that were low risk. In some cases, the targets, such as financial networks, no longer existed, or were individuals who had died.
"Treasury is exploring ways to relieve that burden while helping to prioritize more impactful activities to implement sanctions, including scrutinizing for sanctions evasion," it said in a release.
More than 10 of the removals were Colombia-based businesses, while most of the delisted individuals were people based or born in countries including Colombia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Mexico, Russia, Syria, Iraq and Algeria. Vessels removed included the Nolan oil products tanker, the Fortune Galaxy crude oil tanker, both of which were Panama-flagged, and the Rise Glory, an Iran-flagged crude tanker.
The use of sanctions on countries like Venezuela, Iran, Syria and Russia has grown in recent years. Annual new listings increased from 880 in 2017 to more than 3,000 in 2024, Treasury said.
"Sanctions are not intended to be eternal," a senior Treasury official told reporters in a teleconference. "For example, we have scaled back our sanctions on Syria and Venezuela to better match our foreign policy and national security interests."
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)
