Daily Compliance Brief — US Treasury Expands North Korea Sanctions

February 13, 2026

Signal

In the past 24 hours, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a new round of sanctions targeting North Korea-linked individuals and entities. These additions reflect continued emphasis on disrupting financial networks associated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its sanction-evasion mechanisms.

The updated listings include entities purportedly involved in procurement, shipping, and technology sectors that support prohibited programmes. The breadth of designations underlines ongoing geopolitical risk and extended enforcement focus on complex networks spanning multiple jurisdictions.

Why it matters

For compliance teams, this expands the scope of sanctions screening obligations and increases indirect exposure risk, especially for institutions with global correspondent relationships or cross-border transaction flows. Screening systems and controls must ingest and act on the expanded listings promptly to mitigate exposure.

Institutions should review monitoring thresholds, escalation procedures, and retrospective screening processes to ensure that newly designated parties and their known associates are identified. Robust governance over sanctions data ingestion, fuzzy-matching logic, and reporting obligations will be critical amid evolving geopolitical sanctions regimes.