SANCTIONS LISTS AND WATCHLISTS EXPLAINED · GUIDEUPDATED 2026-09-04
Sanctions Lists and Watchlists Explained
World Bank debarment: 620 of the 1,515 listings were sanctioned by another bank
The Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals, how cross-debarment spreads a sanction across five development banks, and where it stops.
Procurement teams reach for the World Bank debarment list expecting a World Bank list, and it is not one. Under the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions, in force since 1 July 2011, a debarment of more than one year imposed by any of five multilateral development banks is enforced by all of them, so the published listing carries the African Development Bank's decisions, the Asian Development Bank's, the EBRD's and the Inter-American Development Bank's alongside the Bank's own. Of the 1,515 records refreshed at 08:00 on 4 September 2026, 620 arrived by cross-debarment: 334 from the ADB, 125 from the EBRD, 102 from the IDB and 42 from the AfDB. The sanction itself follows an Integrity Vice Presidency investigation into fraud or corruption in a Bank-financed project, decided first by the Office of Suspension and Debarment and, if contested, by a Sanctions Board of seven external judges. The consequence is exclusion from Bank-financed contracts for the stated period. The listing is public, searchable, refreshed every three hours, and carries a firm name, address, country, ineligibility period and grounds — and no identity numbers whatsoever.
What this workflow covers
SCOPE- 1,515 records at the 4 September 2026 refresh: 1,247 firms and 259 individuals, spread across 117 countries.
- 620 of them are cross-debarments enforced under the mutual enforcement agreement — ADB 334, EBRD 125, IDB 102, AfDB 42 — with the remaining 895 imposed by the World Bank itself.
- 732 records carry an ineligibility end date of 31 December 2999, the file's convention for an indefinite or permanent sanction; finite periods run out as late as 8 January 2040. Start dates span 16 March 1999 to 11 August 2026, so the listing is cumulative rather than a snapshot of current procurements.
- The Grounds column identifies the sanctionable practice by citing the Procurement Guidelines clause, or marks the record as a controlled affiliate of a sanctioned entity, or as a cross-debarment naming the originating bank.
- China accounts for 387 of the 1,515 records, ahead of Viet Nam (61), Nigeria (55), India (54), Ukraine (53) and the United Kingdom (46).
- The listing refreshes every three hours and is published as a searchable table on worldbank.org. There is no delta file, so change detection means snapshotting and diffing on the supplier name and start date.
- Cross-debarment has exceptions worth knowing: it does not apply to projects in Brazil at federal level, Bulgaria, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kenya or Serbia, unless the relevant legal agreements were amended.
- Absent from the record: any national sanctions effect, any identifier beyond name and address, and any successor tracking beyond the affiliate entries. Debarred principals reappearing behind a new company are a known pattern the file cannot show you.
- Appearing here disqualifies a bidder from Bank-financed work and reads as a serious integrity signal elsewhere, but it is not an asset freeze and nothing about it is criminal. Our coverage register carries the World Bank, EBRD, ADB and IDB debarment lists as registered sources; the African Development Bank's own list is not among them.
Key statistics
DATA- Records in the listing refreshed 4 September 2026
- 1,515 (1,247 firms, 259 individuals) across 117 countries
- Counted from the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals
- Entries arriving by cross-debarment
- 620 — ADB 334, EBRD 125, IDB 102, AfDB 42
- Counted from the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals
- Refresh interval of the published listing
- Every 3 hours
- World Bank, debarred firms and individuals
Compliance glossary
TERMS- Debarment
- A finding that a firm or individual is ineligible to be awarded a contract financed by the institution, imposed for a stated period after an integrity investigation into fraud or corruption.
- Cross-debarment
- Enforcement by one multilateral development bank of another's debarment decision, under the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions, where the original sanction exceeds one year.
- Debarment with conditional release
- The World Bank's default sanction: ineligibility for a minimum period, after which reinstatement depends on the party meeting integrity compliance conditions rather than on the calendar alone.
- Integrity Vice Presidency (INT)
- The independent World Bank unit that investigates allegations of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed projects and brings sanctions cases to the Office of Suspension and Debarment.
Authoritative references
SOURCES- 01World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals
The World Bank
- 02World Bank Group Sanctions System
The World Bank
- 03World Bank Group Sanctions Board
The World Bank
- 04Office of Suspension and Debarment
The World Bank
Frequently asked questions
Q&A- What is cross-debarment and which banks take part?
- It is the mutual enforcement of debarment decisions among the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, EBRD, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank Group, in force since 1 July 2011. A debarment of more than one year by any of the five is recognised by the others, which is why 620 of the 1,515 entries on the World Bank listing were decided elsewhere.
- Does a World Bank debarment stop a company trading generally?
- No. It makes the firm ineligible for contracts financed by the participating development banks for the stated period. It is not a sanctions designation, it freezes nothing, and it creates no criminal exposure. Many procurement policies nonetheless treat it as a disqualifying integrity finding in their own right.
- What does an ineligibility end date of 2999 mean?
- It is the file's placeholder for a sanction with no scheduled end — a permanent debarment, or one whose release depends on conditions rather than on time. 732 of the 1,515 records carry it. Do not present those as expiring in the year 2999 to a reviewer; read them as open-ended.
- How does a debarred firm get released?
- Most World Bank debarments are imposed with conditional release, meaning the firm returns to eligibility only after meeting integrity compliance conditions and cooperating with the Bank. The end date in the listing is the earliest date release can occur, not an automatic reinstatement, which is why some records stay listed past the date shown.
- Where can I download the debarred firms list?
- The Bank publishes it as a searchable listing on worldbank.org, refreshed every three hours, rather than as a bulk file with a stable schema. Teams that need it in a system usually capture the published table on a schedule and keep the dated snapshots, since there is no change feed to subscribe to.
- Why do so many entries have no dates of birth or registration numbers?
- Because the sanction attaches to a party in a procurement process, and the Bank publishes what identified that party in the contract file: a name, an address and a country. Matching a debarred individual against a customer record therefore depends on name and country alone, and warrants corroboration before you act on it.
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