How to Check If You're on a Sanctions List: OFAC, UN and EU Explained

You can check the main international sanctions lists yourself, today, for free. The official search tools are public. What they do not do is tell you whether a partial match to your name is you, and that ambiguity is where most of the real damage happens.

The three lists that matter most

United States, OFAC. The Office of Foreign Assets Control publishes the Specially Designated Nationals list and several other sanctions lists. Search them at OFAC's Sanctions List Search, which covers the SDN list plus the consolidated non-SDN lists. Full list files and documentation sit on OFAC's sanctions list page.

United Nations. The Security Council maintains the consolidated list of individuals and entities subject to measures imposed by its sanctions committees, published at the UN Security Council Consolidated List. Because UN measures are implemented through national law, this list is the source that most other jurisdictions build on.

European Union. EU restrictive measures are set out on the Commission's sanctions and restrictive measures pages, with the country-by-country picture on the EU Sanctions Map and the consolidated financial sanctions dataset published via the EU open data portal.

Other regimes exist and can matter depending on where you bank or trade, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and various national lists across Africa.

How to run the search properly

Search each list separately rather than relying on one aggregator. Then vary the input:

• Try the name as it appears on your passport, then as it appears in press coverage, then as it appears on any company filing.
• Try each transliteration you have ever seen used, including French and English spellings of the same name.
• Search surname alone if the surname is uncommon, and both given name and surname if it is common.
• Search any company you own or direct, not only your own name. Entity designations are as consequential as personal ones.
• Note the date you searched. A clean result is only accurate as of that day.

Reading a match correctly

Most apparent hits are not the person searching. The lists identify designated persons with additional identifiers, typically date of birth, place of birth, nationality, passport or national identity numbers, and known aliases. A name that matches while the identifiers do not is a false positive, and false positives are common with names that are widespread in a region.

The reverse problem also exists. A bank's screening system may match you against a designated person because its matching threshold is loose, or because an old alias in the record resembles your name. You cannot see the bank's system. What you can do is hold a documented record showing what the official lists say, with your identifiers set out, so the question can be resolved on paper rather than on assumption.

What the free tools do not cover

• Politically exposed person status. No official global PEP list exists. That classification comes from commercial databases and public-record research, which is a separate exercise. See our guide to PEP status for former officials.
• Ownership and control. Sanctions regimes generally reach entities owned or controlled by designated persons even where the entity itself is not named. Checking a company name against a list is not the same as checking its ownership.
• Adverse media and enforcement records. Regulatory advisories, court records and credible investigative reporting sit outside the lists entirely, and banks read them.
• Historical delistings. A person removed from a list can still appear in third-party databases that were not updated.

No private report is an official clearance

Search phrases like "sanctions clearance certificate" and "PEP clearance report" are common, so it is worth being direct: no private firm can issue an official clearance. Governments do not certify individuals as sanctions-free, and any document claiming to do so is not what it says it is. What a properly produced report can do is record what each named official source returned on a stated date, cite it, and set out the identifiers used to rule matches in or out. That is evidence for a decision, not a decision by a public authority.

A Scrutinex report is also not a consumer report under the US Fair Credit Reporting Act and must not be used for employment, tenant, credit or insurance eligibility decisions.

Next step

Read how a Scrutinex report is produced, see what each report covers on report types, or order a PEP and sanctions self-check report if you want the search documented rather than repeated by hand every time someone asks.

French-language version: Suis-je sur une liste de sanctions ?