OFAC Removes DRC-Linked Individual and Safari Club Entities From SDN List

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has removed a Democratic Republic of the Congo-linked individual and three listings associated with the Safari Club from its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List.

The September 23, 2026 update removes François Olenga, a Congolese general and former Head of the Military House of the President, under several aliases including Olenga Tete, Olenga Tate, Okunji and Otshundi. OFAC also removed Safari Club, Centre de Loisir Safari Club and Safari Beach, which were listed as linked to Olenga.

These removals matter for financial institutions and other regulated businesses that use OFAC data for sanctions screening and transaction controls. Screening systems need to reflect list changes accurately so that organizations do not continue applying restrictions to parties that have been removed from a sanctions list, while maintaining appropriate records of previous screening decisions.

OFAC’s update also contains an unrelated administrative change to a Cuban entity’s address. The agency clarified that the change from “8 ½” to “8 1/2” does not represent a new listing or impose new sanctions.

What this means for compliance teams

Sanctions compliance is not limited to identifying new designations. Delistings and other list amendments also require timely attention. Organizations should ensure that screening systems receive current sanctions data and that alias information, identifiers and linked entities are updated consistently.

Compliance teams should also distinguish substantive sanctions changes from administrative amendments. Treating every OFAC list update as a new sanctions exposure can create unnecessary alerts and manual review, while failing to process genuine removals can leave outdated restrictions in place.

For firms operating across jurisdictions, the update reinforces the need for controlled sanctions-data management, regular screening-list refreshes and documented procedures for handling both designations and removals.