Where sanctions and recall data comes from

Sanctions Screen and Product Recalls are two of our planned APIs. Both are built on lists that governments publish for free.

Sanctions lists

The main sources are the UN Security Council Consolidated List, the US Treasury's OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list, the EU consolidated list of financial sanctions, the UK Sanctions List, and the UAE's local terrorist list, published through the Executive Office for Control and Non-Proliferation. Each uses its own format and fields, and entries can be added on any day.

Matching names

The same name can be transliterated in several ways, many entries have aliases, and dates of birth are sometimes incomplete. Screening therefore uses approximate matching and shows why each result matched. A person should review the results before any decision is made.

Recall notices

Recall data comes from the UK Office for Product Safety and Standards, the EU Safety Gate system, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and the US Food and Drug Administration. Each describes products differently and uses its own identifiers and categories.

How we store it

We keep each original record with a link to its source and map it into a common format. Every response names the list a result came from and the date that list was last updated.