Latin America: Most Sanctioned Area In The World?
Latin America flies under the sanctions radar, but this region is more sanctioned by the world than North Korea (899 global designations) or Iran (1,672 global designations). As of late October 2021, 1990 sanctions have been imposed against designees in Latin America, with 95% of them (1897) imposed by the United States.
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Despite the political prominence of Cuba and Venezuela sanctions, they are not the top US sanctions priority in Latin America. That title belongs to narcotics traffickers, who are the targets of 85% of US sanctions actions.
Venezuela follows at 9%, human rights sanctions, imposed under the relatively new Global Magnitsky authority round out the top three at 2.7%.
Non-US sanctions are driven by the UN and EU, and are then imposed by Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, UK and Ukraine.
Outside of the narcotics focus (Colombia and Mexico) and the political focus (Venezuela and Cuba) Panama and the British Virgin Islands have high sanctions numbers that are a result of global concern about in illicit activity in these countries.
Their shell-company friendly policies have led to sanctions under North Korea, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Human Rights and Organized Crime lists.
Methodology Note: This analysis uses addresses provided by the list source. Sometimes the list source does not provide an address, while other times, an entity sanctioned under a “Venezuela” list has an address in Mexico. This analysis also combines data from multiple OFAC lists, for example, we merged VENEZUELA-EO13850 and VENEZUELA-EO13884 sanctions with VENEZUELA EO sanctions.
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