The Non-SDN Menu-Based Sanctions List (NS-MBS List) is maintained by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to identify persons against whom the U.S. government has imposed one or more "menu-based" sanctions selected from a statutorily prescribed catalogue, rather than the comprehensive asset freeze that characterizes the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List. Its principal legal underpinnings are the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA), Public Law 115-44 — particularly Section 235, which enumerates twelve possible sanctions the President may impose on persons engaging in significant transactions with Russia's defense or intelligence sectors under Section 231, and parallel menus in Sections 224, 232, and 233 — together with the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 (UFSA), the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 (IFCA), and the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. OFAC consolidated these populations into a single published list to give compliance officers a discrete reference distinct from the SDN List.
Procedurally, designation begins with a determination by the Secretary of State or Treasury (depending on the statute) that the targeted conduct has occurred — for instance, a "significant transaction" with a person identified on CAATSA Section 231's List of Specified Persons. The implementing agency then selects from the statutory menu the specific sanctions to impose. Under CAATSA Section 235, the menu includes denial of Export-Import Bank assistance, prohibition on U.S. financial institution loans exceeding $10 million in a twelve-month period, denial of export licenses for dual-use goods, restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, blocking of property, visa exclusion of corporate officers, and several others. The agency must select at least five of the twelve. The designation is published in the Federal Register, the entity is added to the NS-MBS List on Treasury.gov, and a corresponding entry specifies which sub-sanctions apply.
Each NS-MBS entry therefore reads as a bespoke compliance instruction rather than a blanket prohibition. A bank reviewing a hit must consult the specific "Sanctions" field of the listing — for example, "Section 231 — prohibition on loans," or "Section 224 — prohibition on transactions in debt of longer than 14 days maturity" — and apply only that restriction. This contrasts with SDN entries, where any property in U.S. jurisdiction must be blocked and virtually all dealings prohibited absent a license. Some NS-MBS sanctions are extraterritorial in effect: CAATSA Section 231, for instance, reaches non-U.S. persons worldwide, making it a secondary sanctions tool. OFAC has on occasion migrated persons from the NS-MBS List to the SDN List when conduct escalates, or removed them following remedial undertakings.
Contemporary examples illustrate the list's range. In September 2018, the State Department imposed CAATSA Section 231 sanctions on China's Equipment Development Department (EDD) of the Central Military Commission and its director Li Shangfu for procuring Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia's Rosoboronexport; the EDD entry appeared on the NS-MBS List with five enumerated sanctions including denial of export licenses and a U.S. financial system prohibition. In December 2020, Turkey's Presidency of Defense Industries (Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı, SSB) was designated under the same authority for its acquisition of the S-400 system, with sanctions including a prohibition on Export-Import Bank assistance and an asset-blocking provision applied to SSB's president Ismail Demir. Russian sovereign debt restrictions imposed under Executive Order 14024 and earlier directives have likewise populated the list with sectoral restrictions on entities such as Sberbank and Gazprombank prior to their subsequent SDN designation in 2022.
The NS-MBS List should be distinguished from the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) List, which implements Ukraine-related Directives 1–4 under Executive Order 13662 and applies uniform sectoral restrictions (such as the 14-day debt rule for Directive 1 financial institutions) to all listed persons. Whereas SSI restrictions flow from directives that bind every entity on the list identically, NS-MBS restrictions are individualized per designation. It is also distinct from the Non-SDN Communist Chinese Military Companies (NS-CMIC) List, the Foreign Sanctions Evaders (FSE) List, and the Section 13(r) disclosure regime. None of these constitutes a full block, but only the NS-MBS reflects a menu-selection methodology.
Controversies have arisen over the calibration of menu selections. Allies have criticized CAATSA Section 231 designations of NATO partners such as Turkey as disproportionate, while Congressional sponsors have alleged under-enforcement against Indian, Egyptian, and Saudi purchases of Russian matériel — debates intensified by the waiver authority in CAATSA Section 231(d) and by India's S-400 acquisition completed in 2023. The compliance burden has also drawn criticism: because identical entity names may appear with materially different restriction sets, automated screening tools must parse the "Additional Sanctions Information" field and not merely flag a name match. Following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a large cohort of previously NS-MBS-listed Russian entities was relocated to the SDN List, shrinking but not eliminating the NS-MBS roster.
For the practitioner — sanctions counsel, bank compliance officer, export-control adviser, or desk officer at a foreign ministry assessing U.S. secondary-sanctions exposure — the NS-MBS List demands the same screening discipline as the SDN List but a finer interpretive touch. A counterparty's appearance is not a categorical bar to engagement; it is an instruction to identify which menu items apply and whether the contemplated transaction falls within them. Misreading an NS-MBS entry as an SDN block can needlessly forfeit legitimate business, while treating it as informational can produce enforcement exposure including civil penalties under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Mastery of the list is therefore indispensable to calibrated transatlantic compliance practice.
Example
In December 2020, the U.S. State Department added Turkey's Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) to the NS-MBS List under CAATSA Section 231 for procuring the Russian S-400 air-defense system.