⚠️ Sanctions Checker

What this sanctions checker does

This free sanctions checker screens any person, company, vessel, or other entity against more than 30 international sanctions and watchlists, including the US OFAC Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, the EU Consolidated List, the UK OFSI list, and UN Security Council designations. It matches your query against the OpenSanctions open dataset — an aggregated, daily-updated collection of more than 1.2 million sanctioned and politically exposed entities — and returns the matching records with their source list, entity type, and identifying details. Sanctions screening is a baseline compliance control: before onboarding a customer, paying a counterparty, or closing a transaction, regulated firms are expected to check that the party is not subject to OFAC, EU, UK, or UN restrictions. Use this tool for a fast first-pass check; it does not replace a documented, audited screening process inside a regulated compliance programme. This page is the free, self-service way to run a name through sanctions screening yourself; when you need a documented, analyst-led review with full ownership analysis and an audit trail, that is a commercial engagement — see our sanctions compliance service rather than relying on this informational lookup alone.

How to read the results

Type a name, company, tax identifier (such as a Russian INN), or other identifier and select Screen. The tool runs a fuzzy name match against the consolidated lists, so close spelling variants and transliterations can surface alongside exact hits. Each result card shows the matched entity, its type, the sanctions list or lists it appears on, and supporting metadata. A match is a candidate, not a confirmed identity: sanctions lists contain many people who share common names, and a hit must be resolved against dates of birth, identifiers, and other distinguishing data before you treat the subject as sanctioned. An empty result means no match was found in the screened lists today; it is not a clearance certificate, because lists change daily and this dataset does not cover every national regime. Always confirm any potential match against the official primary source before making a compliance decision.

When to run a sanctions check

Sanctions screening is not a one-off step. Run a check at onboarding, before releasing a payment, when ownership or directorship of a counterparty changes, and on a recurring schedule for active relationships, because designations are added and amended continuously. Common triggers include taking on a new customer or vendor, processing a cross-border transfer, vetting an investor or beneficial owner, and re-checking a portfolio after a major sanctions package is announced. This free sanctions checker is built for that fast first pass: paste a name, company, or identifier and see whether it surfaces against OFAC, EU, UK, UN, and the wider set of lists aggregated by OpenSanctions. For higher-risk decisions, pair the name-level screening here with ownership analysis — a counterparty can be unlisted itself while being majority-owned by a blocked person, which is exactly the exposure the 50-Percent Rule captures. Whatever the trigger, document what you searched, what you found, and how you resolved each candidate match, so your screening stands up to later review.

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