Screening Glossary
What is a sanctions list?
A sanctions list is the register a government or international body publishes naming the persons, entities, vessels and aircraft subject to restrictive measures such as asset freezes and trade bans. Being on it is a legal status, not a risk rating.
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Every regime rests on an underlying legal instrument, whether a UN Security Council resolution, an EU regulation, a US executive order or a UK statutory instrument, and the list is the operative annex naming who is caught. Different authorities maintain them on different schedules and in different file formats. The frequent misunderstanding is that there is one global list. There is not, and the same person can appear on three lists with three spellings and three reference numbers.
What this workflow covers
- Scope the regimes you are in, then ingest each list on its own cadence.
- Screen aliases and weak aliases, not only the primary name on the entry.
- Entries carrying nothing but a name generate most of your false positives; entries with a passport number and a date of birth resolve a candidate in seconds.
- A name absent from every list can still be restricted, because ownership rules extend the freeze.
- The list is not a criminal record, a suspect watchlist or a PEP database.
Compliance glossary
- Restrictive measures
- The EU term for sanctions: asset freezes, travel bans, sectoral prohibitions and arms embargoes adopted by Council regulation or decision.
- Weak alias
- A low-quality alternative spelling published alongside a listing; it is screened with caution because it generates many false positives.
Authoritative references
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How many lists are we supposed to be screening?
There is no fixed number. The UN, the EU, the United States, the United Kingdom and dozens of national authorities each publish their own, and several publish more than one register. Scope by legal nexus first, then add the lists that matter to your sector and document the choice.
How often do the lists actually change?
Major authorities amend theirs several times a week, and one geopolitical event can produce hundreds of additions in a day. Amendments also alter existing entries, so a new alias or passport number can make a record match that did not match yesterday.
Do we have to pay for the raw list files?
No. OFAC, the EU, the UN and the UK all publish machine-readable files at no charge. The cost of a screening programme sits in normalising the formats, keeping them current and reviewing candidates, never in the data itself.
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