GDE-079 |
Sanctions screening | |||||||
Financial intelligence | ||||||||
October 2026 | ||||||||
01
What it is
A sanctions list search is a check of a name against the official lists of people, companies, vessels and aircraft that governments have designated for asset freezes, travel bans or trade restrictions. It establishes whether a subject is currently sanctioned, by which authority and under which regime.
A designation is the formal act of placing a person or entity on a sanctions list. Each authority publishes its own list: the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the EU and the UN Security Council. Designations differ between regimes, so a subject can be listed in London and absent in Washington.
A careful search answers three questions: is this subject designated, by whom and since when. Reporters covering oligarch assets, conflict finance and procurement run it routinely, and the core lists are free for everyone to search.
| When to use this guide
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02
How do you search sanctions lists?
Start with an aggregator to see every regime at once, then confirm each hit on the issuing authority's own list. The whole check takes minutes once your identifiers are ready.
Five free tools cover the main regimes. Use the aggregator for reach and the official lists for confirmation.
OpenSanctions: An open database that aggregates official sanctions lists, including OFAC, the EU, the UN and the UK FCDO list, alongside politically exposed person data. Web search is free for non-commercial use with no login; journalists publishing in the public interest can apply for a free API key, and business use needs a data licence.
OFAC Sanctions List Search: Searches the US Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List and the Non-SDN Consolidated Sanctions List. Free, no login. Fuzzy name matching is controlled by a Minimum Name Score slider that defaults to 100, an exact match.
UK Sanctions List search: The FCDO search for UK designations. Free, no login. Since 28 January 2026 the UK Sanctions List is the only source for UK designations; the former OFSI Consolidated List is closed and no longer updated.
EU Sanctions Map: Maps EU sanctions regimes by country, with the listed persons and entities and links to the legal acts behind each measure. Free, no login.
UN Security Council Consolidated List: Covers every individual and entity subject to UN Security Council sanctions measures, with a search tool and downloads in XML, HTML and PDF. Free, no login.
| Before you begin Stop at the login. Every list in this guide is searchable without an account. If a site asks you to sign in or pay before showing a designation, return to the issuing authority's free list instead. Legal considerations. Searching a list carries no legal risk, but reporting someone as sanctioned does: name the regime, the authority and the listing date, and treat a name match as unconfirmed until identifiers agree. Compliance screening for a business counts as commercial use under OpenSanctions' terms. |
Record the full name with every transliteration you have seen, plus date of birth, nationality, passport or company registration number and, for vessels, the IMO number. List entries carry aliases and identifiers, and every later match depends on them. Note which source document gave you each spelling.
Search the name in OpenSanctions and open each candidate tagged as sanctioned. Note the source datasets on each record, such as the UK FCDO Sanctions List or the OFAC SDN List, and the date the data was last updated, since aggregators refresh on a cycle and can lag the official lists.
In OFAC Sanctions List Search, run the name at the default score of 100, then lower the Minimum Name Score to surface spelling variants. Lower scores are potential matches, not confirmations. Only the name field is scored; for the ID field, search with and without punctuation. Open the record and copy the programme tags, aliases and identifiers.
Search the UK Sanctions List and record the regime, the Unique ID and the UK Statement of Reasons, which sets out the government's grounds for the designation. Ignore copies of the OFSI Consolidated List, which closed on 28 January 2026.
In the EU Sanctions Map, open the relevant regime, find the listing and follow the link to the legal act; the act published in the Official Journal of the EU is the text to cite. Then search the UN Security Council Consolidated List and note the permanent reference number on any match; its prefix identifies the UN sanctions regime.
Confirm that at least two independent identifiers match, such as date of birth and nationality, before stating that a subject is sanctioned. Record the regime, authority, reference number, designation date and your retrieval date. A negative result is a dated finding for the lists you searched, not proof that no restriction applies.
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