SCREENING GLOSSARY · GUIDEUPDATED 2026-09-04
Screening Glossary
What is a criminal watchlist?
A person can be wanted for fraud for years without ever appearing on a sanctions list. A criminal watchlist is the law-enforcement register that shows it: people wanted, subject to an international alert, or otherwise sought in connection with criminal proceedings.
Interpol, the FBI, Europol and national police forces all publish public extracts of who they are looking for, and those registers earn their place in due diligence precisely because sanctions lists do not cover this ground. Two limits get glossed over in vendor material. The public extracts are a subset of the underlying police data, and a wanted-person entry records a request for arrest rather than a conviction.
What this workflow covers
SCOPE- Match names and identifiers against the public wanted-person extracts alongside sanctions and PEP data.
- Confirm a hit against date of birth, nationality and the published photograph before it goes anywhere.
- Notices are cancelled when proceedings end or a compliance review finds them non-conforming, so a hit seen last year may no longer exist. Date what you saw.
- Criminal and wanted-person watchlists run by default in every Quick Check here rather than as a paid add-on, and the source register is published on the coverage page.
- Presence on a watchlist creates no asset freeze.
Compliance glossary
TERMS- Wanted person
- An individual sought by a law-enforcement authority in connection with criminal proceedings, arrest or the service of a sentence.
- Public extract
- The subset of a police register that the issuing authority has agreed to publish; the full dataset stays restricted to law enforcement.
Authoritative references
SOURCES- 01About Notices
INTERPOL
- 02FBI Wanted
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Frequently asked questions
Q&A- Watchlist or sanctions list: what changes for us?
- A sanctions list records administrative designations carrying legal prohibitions such as asset freezes. A criminal watchlist records law-enforcement interest in locating a person. A watchlist hit changes your risk assessment; it does not by itself prohibit dealing with them.
- Which criminal watchlists can we actually see?
- Interpol publishes an extract of Red Notices where the requesting country agreed to publication, the FBI publishes its wanted pages, Europol maintains a most-wanted site, and many national forces publish their own. Coverage is partial by design, and any claim otherwise deserves a hard question.
- Is criminal watchlist screening required by law?
- Rarely as a named statutory obligation, unlike sanctions screening. It is used to meet due diligence and risk-assessment duties, and it is frequently the only control that catches a counterparty who is wanted but not designated.
Q.01
Q.02
Q.03