Comprehensive Sanctions

This is the most sweeping form of sanctions. Instead of listing particular targets, the measures cover a whole jurisdiction: imports, exports, investment, banking and services are barred, with limited exceptions for things like humanitarian goods. Few programmes today are fully country-wide. Regimes more often combine selective bans on sectors with lists of named parties. Country-wide programmes are simple to apply in screening because the rule is the place, not a name, but they are blunt: ordinary citizens and legitimate trade also suffer. Firms handle them by blocking relevant countries in onboarding and payments and by checking for indirect links such as transshipment. Licences may allow specific exceptions. Screening names does little here; the work lies in spotting indirect routes such as transshipment.

A global bank's policy treats one country as subject to country-wide sanctions. Its systems block any payment with an address, bank or port in that country, and its onboarding team declines customers resident there. A client in a neighbouring country then asks to pay a supplier via a third-country agent. The bank asks for shipping documents and finds the goods end up in the sanctioned country, so it refuses.