Sanctions List Screening

Compliance requirements under foreign trade law have become significantly stricter in recent years. New legal regulations and increasingly rigorous enforcement mean that companies are now exposed to a much higher risk of liability. Breaches of sanctions regulations can result in criminal consequences and lead to substantial fines.  

At the same time, companies are legally obliged to ensure that they do not enter into business relationships with sanctioned individuals or organisations. This is based on EU and international embargo regulations, which apply directly and provide for a strict prohibition on the provision of funds or economic resources: funds or economic resources must not be made available to listed parties, either directly or indirectly.  

In practice, this means:  

• All business partners (e.g. customers, suppliers, banks or logistics partners) must be checked regularly  
• Sanctions lists are constantly changing and require continuous updating  
• Checks must be documented and traceable  
• Manual processes are prone to errors, time-consuming and not scalable  

Companies are therefore faced with the challenge of establishing verification processes that are both legally compliant and efficient.  

With the integrated sanctions list check in our Verifier Suite, we offer a comprehensive solution for tax and foreign trade compliance. 

The tool enables individuals, companies and organisations to be checked quickly and systematically against international sanctions and compliance databases. A reliable initial assessment can be carried out right at the front end to determine whether there are any relevant hits for the legally required sanctions list check. For teams in sales, compliance and specialist departments, this means less manual research, faster decision-making and greater certainty when dealing with business partners. 

In-depth, high-quality screening: 

The screening goes well beyond a simple name match. In addition to names, depending on the data available, additional characteristics such as dates of birth, nationalities, country references or other identifying features can be taken into account. This significantly improves the quality of matches and reduces the number of irrelevant hits.  

Flexible verification criteria:

If you do not wish to use our standard verification criteria, you have the option to address specific compliance issues in a targeted manner. For example, by examining traditional sanctions lists or politically exposed persons (PEPs) separately. The check can thus be tailored to the specific business transaction.  

Transparent and traceable results:  

The results are not merely presented as ‘match’ or ‘no match’, but are provided in a detailed, technical format. Users can view, amongst other things: 

• relevance and probability of a match
• alternative spellings 
• country and thematic references  
• underlying sanctions programmes and data sources 

This enables a well-founded professional assessment without the need for in-depth technical expertise.  

Integrated documentation and auditability:  

Checks carried out are stored in a history and can be accessed at any time. The history can be filtered, searched and exported. In addition, comments can be added directly to the check record. This results in a fully traceable screening process – a key component for internal approvals, audit trails and audits.  

Centralised database:  

The sanctions list screening is based on international compliance data sources, which are linked via the “OpenSanctions” database. This ensures that up-to-date, globally relevant sanctions and PEP information is available centrally. On this basis, the Verifier Suite can be used not only in Europe but worldwide to carry out sanctions list checks.  

Seamless integration:  

The solution can be easily integrated into existing systems and automatically incorporated into existing processes. Extensive process adjustments are not required.