Targeted Financial Sanctions (TFS)

They have two parts: a freeze on funds the designated party owns or controls, and a ban on giving funds or other resources to that party. Both apply without delay once someone is designated. The term is closely linked to the Financial Action Task Force, whose standards require countries to apply TFS against terrorism-related and proliferation-related listings. Terrorism-related listings come from UN committees and from national lists. Non-proliferation sanctions target those linked to weapons of mass destruction programmes and their financing. Countries must put in place a legal power to freeze, and firms must screen against the lists, freeze what they find and report it. Because the measures are aimed at named parties rather than whole economies, they limit the harm to ordinary people. They also make screening quality central, since a missed name means a missed freeze. A country's FATF assessment turns partly on how fast and how fully it applies them.

A UN committee adds a trading company to its list on the grounds of weapons proliferation. A country’s authority publishes the listing the same day. A bank’s overnight screening matches the company to an account. The bank freezes the balance of 120,000, refuses a pending outgoing payment and reports the freeze to the authority.