The black list of “Specially Designed Nationals and Blocked persons”. Written by Alberto Redi (halfmoon) | |
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
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 The US Treasury Department recently released a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers that can be publicly checked up by private businesses that, according to companies themselves, cannot offer certain services to people quoted in the list. So, for example, rental and mortgage companies and car dealers added the following statement to their rental application: “ The company X is prohibited by law from leasing to persons listed on the dept. of the treasury’s OFAC list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers”. This may be considered as a normal procedure in countries where Homeland Security is taken in high consideration. What is not normal, but unfortunately quite usual, is that companies sometimes deny such services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.
According to the “Frequently Asked Questions section” on the Department of Treasury Website, the procedure to follow in case a company finds that a customer’s name matches with one on the list , is the following one: “What do I do if I have a match to the SDN list?If you have checked a name manually or by using software and find a match, you should do a little more research. Is it an exact name match, or very close? Is your customer located in the same general area as the SDN? If not, it may be a "false hit." If there are many similarities, contact OFAC's "hotline" at 1-800-540-6322 for verification. If your "hit" concerns an in-process wire transfer, you may prefer to e-mail your question to OFAC. Unless a transaction involves an exact match, it is recommended that you contact OFAC Compliance before actually blocking assets. [09-10-02]” The List of “Specially Designated nationals and Blocked persons” ( the SDN List ) has been often used by banks to block financial transactions carried out by people flagged as drug traffickers, but after sept.11, 2001, the list was expanded and used in many other occasions. As reported by the Washington Post, “Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.” "The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security," said Shirin Sinnar, the report's author. "The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don't trample on individual rights." Treasury Department spokesmen, declared that actually some “false positive” could be root out but they also claimed that the department has set up an effective compliance section on the OFAC Web site and that it is promoting workshops with industry representatives in order to fix up this problem. The Washington Post also reports the story of Mr. Tom Kubbany who is “neither a terrorist nor a drug trafficker, has average credit and has owned homes in the past, so the Northern California mental-health worker was baffled when his mortgage broker said lenders were not interested in him. Reviewing his loan file, he discovered something shocking. At the top of his credit report was an OFAC alert provided by credit bureau TransUnion that showed that his middle name, Hassan, is an alias for Ali Saddam Hussein, purportedly a "son of Saddam Hussein." Under OFAC guidance, the date discrepancy signals a false match. Still, Kubbany said, the broker decided not to proceed. "She just talked with a bunch of lenders over the phone and they said, 'No,' " he said. "So we said, 'The heck with it. We'll just go somewhere else.' " Kubbany and his wife are applying for another loan, though he worries that the stigma lingers. "There's a dark cloud over us," he said. "We will never know if we had qualified for the mortgage last summer, then we might have been in a house now." |
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