# Sanctions Screening — EU, UN, OFAC & UK Watchlists (`dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening`) Actor

Screen names of people, companies and vessels against the official consolidated sanctions lists of the EU, UN, US OFAC and UK in one pass, with a fuzzy match score and the legal reference behind every hit.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening.md
- **Developed by:** [Benjamin Jerez](https://apify.com/dalbian) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$10.00 / 1,000 name screeneds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Sanctions Screening — EU, UN, OFAC & UK Watchlists

Screen names of people, companies and vessels against the four consolidated sanctions lists that matter — the **European Union**, the **UN Security Council**, the **US Treasury's OFAC** and the **UK's FCDO** — in a single pass, with a match score and the legal reference behind every hit.

Roughly **33,000 designations**, downloaded fresh on every run from the authorities themselves.

### What a screening looks like

Ask about `Rosneft`:

| List | Matched entry | Programme | Score |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| UK | ROSNEFT | The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations | 100 |
| EU | ROSNEFT AERO | UKR | 100 |
| OFAC | OPEN JOINT-STOCK COMPANY ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY | UKRAINE-EO13662, RUSSIA-EO14024 | 100 |

`Wagner Group` comes back designated under two separate regimes — Libya and Russia — which is exactly the kind of detail a single-list check misses. `Jean Dupont` and `Acme Trading Ltd` come back clean.

### How matching works

Names never arrive in the form a list holds them. So before comparing, both sides are stripped of accents, punctuation, honorifics and corporate suffixes — `Ltd`, `GmbH`, `OOO`, `JSC` and the rest — and the score blends token overlap with character similarity. `Rosneft Oil Company`, `ROSNEFT` and `Rosneft' Neftyanaya Kompaniya` all reach the same designation.

Every alias a list publishes is matched too, and `matchedOnAlias` tells you when the hit came through one.

**Choosing the threshold** is the real decision. 100 demands a character-for-character match and will miss every transliteration — useless against Russian, Arabic or Chinese names. **85 is the usual compliance setting**: it catches spelling and word-order variants while keeping the review load sane. Below 70 you will be reading a lot of noise.

### What you get per hit

The authority, the matched name, the score, whether it came via an alias, the sanctions programme, the legal instrument, the designation date, the entity type, the country and any published remark. Enough for an analyst to clear or escalate without opening four websites.

### What this is and is not

It is a **screening tool**: it tells you which names resemble a designated party, on lists refreshed at the moment you run it.

It is **not a compliance decision**. A hit is a candidate to review, not a finding — common names generate false positives, and no name-matching system substitutes for a human assessing identity, dates of birth, addresses and beneficial ownership. Equally, an absence of hits is not a clean bill of health: these four lists are not every list in the world, and sanctions can attach through ownership and control rather than by name. Your obligations under EU Regulation 2580/2001, OFAC's 50 Percent Rule, the UK's ownership provisions and your own programme remain entirely yours.

Keep the output. Regulators ask what you screened, against which lists, on which date, at which threshold — and the summary row records all four.

### Sources

| List | Publisher |
| --- | --- |
| **EU** | European Commission — Financial Sanctions Database |
| **UN** | UN Security Council — consolidated list |
| **OFAC** | US Treasury — Specially Designated Nationals |
| **UK** | FCDO — UK Sanctions List |

Each is published by its authority for exactly this purpose and is free to use. No credentials, no third-party aggregator, no per-name licence fee.

### Frequently asked

**Why does a list sometimes load zero entries?**
Because the authority changed its export. The summary row reports what loaded and what failed, so a partial run is never silent — and the failure is usually fixed within a day.

**Does it cover PEPs?**
No. Politically exposed persons are a separate category with no single official list; these four are sanctions designations only.

**How current is it?**
As current as the publishers. The lists are downloaded on every run, never cached between runs.

**Can I screen thousands of names?**
Yes. The lists are fetched once per run and held in memory, so ten thousand names costs barely more than ten.

# Actor input Schema

## `names` (type: `array`):

Names of people, companies or vessels, one per line. Write them as they appear in your records — the matcher strips accents, punctuation and corporate suffixes such as Ltd or GmbH before comparing, so 'Rosneft Oil Company' and 'ROSNEFT' reach the same entry.

## `authorities` (type: `array`):

Which official consolidated lists to load. EU is the European Union's financial sanctions database, UN the Security Council consolidated list, OFAC the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list, UK the OFSI sanctions list. Most compliance policies require all four; drop one only if your policy says so.

## `matchThreshold` (type: `integer`):

How close a name must be to count as a hit. 100 demands an exact match and will miss transliterations. 85 is the usual compliance setting: it catches spelling and word-order variants while keeping the false-positive load manageable. Below 70 expect a lot of noise to review.

## `maxMatchesPerName` (type: `integer`):

How many candidate hits to return per name, best score first. A real alert is almost always in the top few; the rest are there for an analyst to rule out.

## `maxNames` (type: `integer`):

Hard stop per run. The lists are downloaded once and held in memory, so a large batch costs little more than a small one.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "names": [
    "Rosneft",
    "Vladimir Putin",
    "Acme Trading Ltd"
  ],
  "authorities": [
    "EU",
    "UN",
    "OFAC",
    "UK"
  ],
  "matchThreshold": 85,
  "maxMatchesPerName": 10,
  "maxNames": 5000
}
```

# Actor output Schema

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "names": [
        "Rosneft",
        "Vladimir Putin",
        "Acme Trading Ltd"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "names": [
        "Rosneft",
        "Vladimir Putin",
        "Acme Trading Ltd",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "names": [
    "Rosneft",
    "Vladimir Putin",
    "Acme Trading Ltd"
  ]
}' |
apify call dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dalbian/sanctions-watchlist-screening"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/WA4kfcMILVVyPyxAZ/builds/cOC1RPGxK02bkkqd3/openapi.json