The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has drawn up a Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account Sanctions list, retiring its old 'Part 561 list' from service in the process.

One list has replaced the other, the difference being that the CAPTA list can now contain financial firms that other sanctions regimes have listed as undesirable. The CAPTA List contains identifying information about foreign financial institutions for which the opening or maintaining of a correspondent account (or a payable-through account) in the United States is prohibited or subject to strict conditions.

The CAPTA List is not a sub-division of OFAC's famous Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. Information that appears on it will be included in the data formats associated with OFAC's Consolidated Sanctions List.

OFAC has also amended the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations to replace references to the Part 561 list (which came into being in 2012) with references to CAPTA. As of the middle of last month, the only foreign financial institution on the list was the Bank of Kunlun (formerly known as Karamay City Commercial Bank Co Ltd and, before that, Karamay Urban Credit Cooperatives).