Global Sanctions & Banned Persons Screening API

Search individuals and entities across multiple government sanctions databases and banned persons registers in a single API call. This Actor queries OFAC SDN (United States), EU Financial Sanctions (European Union), Canada Autonomous Sanctions, and Australia ASIC Banned/Disqualified Persons and Organisations — five data sources across three major sanctions regimes — and returns all matches in a unified dataset.

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What Problem Does This Solve?

Compliance teams, KYC/AML workflows, and risk systems routinely need to check whether a person, company, or entity appears on government sanctions lists or banned persons registers. Doing this manually means visiting multiple government portals, each with different search interfaces, data formats, and update schedules.

This Actor consolidates five government data sources into one API call:

• OFAC SDN (US Treasury, ~9,000 entries) — the primary US sanctions list covering individuals, entities, vessels, and aircraft designated under various programs
• EU Financial Sanctions Consolidated List (European Commission, ~2,000 entries) — all EU restrictive measures against individuals and entities
• Canada Autonomous Sanctions (Global Affairs Canada, ~5,500 entries) — Canada's standalone sanctions not derived from UN Security Council resolutions
• AU ASIC Banned Persons (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) — individuals banned or disqualified from financial services
• AU ASIC Banned Organisations (ASIC) — organisations banned or disqualified from providing financial services in Australia

A single run with default settings checks all five sources simultaneously, returning results in under 30 seconds for most queries.

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Who Is This For?

• Compliance and legal teams conducting initial screening before onboarding new clients, partners, or counterparties
• KYC/AML workflows that need a quick pre-check before triggering a full due-diligence process
• Fintech developers building onboarding flows, risk scoring pipelines, or automated compliance checks
• AI agent toolchains that need a sanctions lookup tool for autonomous compliance reasoning
• Risk management systems performing periodic re-screening of existing counterparty lists

This tool is designed as a first-pass screening step, not a final compliance determination. See the Disclaimer section below.

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Output Fields

All results include these metadata fields (consistent across all sources):

Field	Description
_source_list	Human-readable source name (e.g. OFAC SDN, EU Financial Sanctions)
_match_category	sanctions_list or banned_person
_search_term	The search term that produced this result
_source	Internal source key (e.g. ofac_sdn, eu_sanctions)
_product_id	SIP product identifier
_collected_at	UTC ISO 8601 timestamp of data collection

Business fields vary by source. Reference by source:

OFAC SDN: name, entity_type, program, country, remarks, list_source, aliases

EU Financial Sanctions: entity_name, entity_type, sanctions_programme, country, aliases, designation_date

Canada Autonomous Sanctions: name, entity_type, country, aliases, date_of_listing, list_source

AU ASIC Persons/Organisations: business_name, license_type, status, issue_date, expiry_date, country

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Input Examples

Screen a single company:

{
  "searchTerms": ["Rosneft"]
}

Batch screen multiple entities:

{
  "searchTerms": ["Bank Melli", "PDVSA", "Wagner"],
  "maxResultsPerSource": 50
}

Screen against sanctions lists only (skip AU ASIC):

{
  "searchTerms": ["Rosneft"],
  "includeSanctionsLists": true,
  "includeBannedPersons": false,
  "maxResultsPerSource": 100
}

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Sample Output

[
  {
    "name": "ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY",
    "entity_type": "Entity",
    "program": "UKRAINE-EO13662",
    "country": "Russia",
    "list_source": "SDN",
    "_source_list": "OFAC SDN",
    "_match_category": "sanctions_list",
    "_search_term": "Rosneft",
    "_source": "ofac_sdn",
    "_product_id": "us_ofac_sanctions",
    "_collected_at": "2026-04-09T10:00:00Z"
  },
  {
    "entity_name": "ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY",
    "entity_type": "LEGAL_PERSON",
    "sanctions_programme": "RUS - Sectoral measures",
    "country": "Russia",
    "_source_list": "EU Financial Sanctions",
    "_match_category": "sanctions_list",
    "_search_term": "Rosneft",
    "_source": "eu_sanctions",
    "_product_id": "eu_sanctions_consolidated_list",
    "_collected_at": "2026-04-09T10:00:00Z"
  },
  {
    "name": "ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY PJSC",
    "entity_type": "Entity",
    "country": "Russia",
    "list_source": "Canada Autonomous Sanctions",
    "_source_list": "Canada Autonomous Sanctions",
    "_match_category": "sanctions_list",
    "_search_term": "Rosneft",
    "_source": "ca_sanctions",
    "_product_id": "ca_sanctions_consolidated",
    "_collected_at": "2026-04-09T10:00:00Z"
  }
]

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Run Summary

Every run writes a RUN_SUMMARY record to the Key-Value Store. It contains per-source status, result counts, and error details. Retrieve it via the Apify API:

GET /v2/key-value-stores/{storeId}/records/RUN_SUMMARY

Example summary:

{
  "total_search_terms": 1,
  "total_sources_queried": 5,
  "total_results": 12,
  "sources_used": ["ofac_sdn", "eu_sanctions", "ca_sanctions", "au_banned_persons", "au_banned_orgs"],
  "per_source_status": [
    { "source": "ofac_sdn", "status": "ok", "result_count": 4, "duration_ms": 320 },
    { "source": "eu_sanctions", "status": "ok", "result_count": 3, "duration_ms": 1850 },
    { "source": "ca_sanctions", "status": "ok", "result_count": 5, "duration_ms": 410 },
    { "source": "au_banned_persons", "status": "empty", "result_count": 0, "duration_ms": 280 },
    { "source": "au_banned_orgs", "status": "empty", "result_count": 0, "duration_ms": 290 }
  ],
  "completed_at": "2026-04-09T10:00:05Z"
}

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Pricing

This Actor uses Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing:

Event	Price
Actor start (per run)	$0.005
Each matched result	$0.003

Cost examples:

• Screen 1 name, get 25 matches across 5 sources → $0.005 + 25 × $0.003 = $0.08
• Screen 10 names, get 250 total matches → $0.005 + 250 × $0.003 = $0.755

Compare to single-source tools like OFAC-API.com (~$0.01/check, OFAC only). This Actor covers 5 data sources across 3 sanctions regimes at comparable cost.

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Data Sources

Source	Authority	Coverage	Update Frequency
OFAC SDN	US Treasury	~9,000 entries	Real-time (preloaded)
EU Financial Sanctions	European Commission	~2,000 entries	Cached 12h (24MB XML)
Canada Autonomous Sanctions	Global Affairs Canada	~5,500 entries	Preloaded
AU ASIC Banned Persons	ASIC	Varies	Live CKAN passthrough
AU ASIC Banned Organisations	ASIC	Varies	Live CKAN passthrough

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⚠️ Disclaimer

This tool performs keyword-based search across government sanctions and banned persons databases. It is NOT a sanctions adjudication engine, legal compliance tool, or substitute for professional compliance advice. Results may include false positives due to name similarities. Always verify matches against primary sources before making compliance decisions. This service does not constitute legal, regulatory, or compliance advice.

This Actor searches by keyword and returns all records where the search term appears in the source database. It does not perform:

• Fuzzy matching or alias expansion
• Identity resolution or deduplication
• Match scoring or confidence ratings
• Any form of legal determination

Results must be reviewed by a qualified person before acting on them. Sanctions compliance is a legal obligation — this tool supports the discovery phase only.