Sanctions
A search for the subject on restrictive-measure lists. A confirmed match is not a matter of enhanced due diligence: it requires freezing the assets and forbids making funds available.
Lists covered UN, OFAC, United Kingdom
0408Screening
What the screening sees, and what it does not.
Screening is useful when you know its edges. This page says what is queried, against which lists, with what reliability, and what a clean result does not let you conclude.
01Two distinct checks
Sanctions and political exposure do not answer the same question.
Both are run from the file, but they share neither their source, nor their evidential weight, nor their consequences.
Political exposure
A search for the subject as a politically exposed person, with a graded verdict: none, former, domestic, foreign, uncertain, and the nature of the link to the office.
Nature of the check Grounded web search, decision support
02The edges
A clean result is not a clearance.
These two limits are not a lawyer's caveat: they are shown in the product next to every result, and they change what you may write in a file.
The lists are reloaded once a day
Sanctions screening consolidates the UN, European Union, OFAC and United Kingdom lists and the French national freeze register, reloaded every day. A designation published since the last load only appears at the next one: for a relationship opened the same day, check the official list.
The PEP check is not a licensed database
It is a grounded web search, summarised automatically. It can miss a genuinely exposed person, and two runs can disagree. A negative verdict is therefore never an automatic attestation: the questionnaire question stays open, to be confirmed by the client's signed declaration and a check against a PEP database.
Adverse media is not screened automatically
Unfavourable reputation is an answer in the questionnaire, resting on what you found, not a press feed the platform analyses. When it is retained, it carries an enhanced-diligence marker.
03Handling a match
A match is not a designation.
Comparison happens on names, and names resemble each other. The platform never turns a near match into a verdict: it shows it to you and leaves the question open, because that is the truthful state until a human has decided.
A company is queried on each of its official names, not only on the one in common use.
A person is queried on their name, with date of birth and nationality as tie-breakers.
Matched entities are listed with their programmes in the file's screening tab, and repeated in the printed report.
A free probe stays possible on someone the file does not list, a spouse or a close associate for instance.
04Outcomes of a run
Zero matches is not zero information.
A counter at zero means something only if the run completed. Everywhere else zero is the absence of a result, not the absence of a match, and the file states the difference explicitly.
Completed
The provider answered. Here alone, zero matches is a finding.
Conclusive
Not screened
The subject was not submitted, for lack of enough detail to query it.
Inconclusive
Not found
The subject could not be resolved at the provider.
Inconclusive
Refused
Access to the service was refused for this organisation.
Inconclusive
Unavailable
The service did not answer. The run is picked up again at the next sweep.
Inconclusive
Not configured
No provider is connected for this kind of check.
Inconclusive
05Ongoing monitoring
The first run is not the last.
Every check carries an expiry. Past it, ongoing monitoring replays the screening without anyone having to think about it, and a failed attempt is picked up at the next sweep rather than forgotten.
Three triggers: onboarding, a manual request, periodic monitoring.
The provider's result is frozen as it stands, never recomputed: a later correction to the file does not rewrite what was seen that day.
The reach of the lists is stored in plain text alongside the result, so today's trace is not reread with tomorrow's coverage.
A company can also be placed under watch in the register, independently of any file.