For anyone who has ever gotten an OFAC hit because the country was classified as an 'Offshore Financial Center' (wire), do you have any advice for how you go about reasearching to determine the validity of the OFAC hit? Do you have specific references to how we should handle it?

It's not an OFAC hit. There's no Treasury program concerned with offshore financial centers. I'm quite certain that you are running some other list (or your vendor has 'packaged' another list with your OFAC screening).

You should dig a little more into the specific match and the list it matched to.

OFAC sanctions have nothing to do with Offshore Financial Centers. If I had to guess, this is more than likely a secondary list included by your service provider.

Based on the information you provided, I'm guessing the hit is in relation to a specific jurisdiction? If so, go to OFAC's website (See the link below) and read up on the specific sanction program to determine the appropriate course of action.

http://www.treasury.gov/about/organizati...ts-Control.aspx

BTW, your FI should have a process in place on how to disposition screening hits.

Wrongly worded post (I apologize): It comes up under the OFAC section (our vendor has a 'packaged' list with the OFAC screening)of the wire notice, that's why I labeled it that way. With that said, has anyone ever had to investigate a country on the Offshore Financial Center list? I hope this is worded better and more clear.

I'm just going to echo the very wise ACBank; if you're running a list of any kind, you should know what to do when it hits.

We do have procedures in place. I am just mainly seeing if others want to share what they do so I can compare it against what we do to make sure we are doing all we can. Thanks.

http://www.imf.org/external/np/mae/oshore/2000/eng/back.htm

is a like to what they are from the IMF how used.

My concerns would be related to your customers use of these after the fact and not an one off wire.

A simple question to ask in this type of situation is: does this activity make sense for this customer?

Thanks everyone. Appreciate the link and the responses.