Gustavo Petro, the former President of Colombia, was planning a little trip to Mexico. He booked a flight on Avianca, Colombia’s national airline. But before he could even get settled in his seat and start sipping champagne, Avianca cancelled his ticket and gave him his money back. According to this article, the airline said it could not fly Petro to Mexico because he was on the US List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.
Petro was put on the SDN List in 2025 under E.O. 14059, and is therefore subject to the restrictions set forth in OFAC’s Illicit Drug Trade Sanctions Regulations. Of course, as we all know, OFAC’s rules, including those just cited, are only binding on U.S. persons. Avianca is not a U.S. person, although its U.S. subsidiary Avianca, Inc., certainly is. However, there is no reason to believe the U.S. subsidiary sold the ticket to Petro. Also, if the transaction between Petro and Avianca were subject to the U.S. restrictions, Avianca would have had to block the money Petro paid for the ticket, not just hand it back to him.
I think it’s likely that Avianca was not relying on the Illicit Drug Trade Sanctions Regulations themselves. Rather, E.O. 14059 provides that OFAC can add to the SDN list
any foreign person determined . . . :
(i) to have provided, or attempted to provide, financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of:
. . .
(B) any sanctioned person;
Because designations on the SDN list are discretionary under this provision of Executive Order 14059, Avianca may have been fudging things a little when it said that decision was not a response to “political or discretionary criteria.” Still, the airline’s compliance heart was in the right place. It is generally a mistake for foreign companies to rush full steam ahead and supply goods and services to SDN’s just because the rules do not technically forbid it. Instead, the company should evaluate the risk and wisdom of its decision based on the possibility that it could wind up on the SDN List itself. That’s no fun, as Petro himself can attest.