How to check a company and its directors against sanctions lists

Why a small buyer should care

You do not need a compliance department to be affected. If a party to your payment is sanctioned, your bank can freeze the transfer and ask questions you would rather have answered in advance, and dealing with a designated party can be an offense regardless of intent. Since the lists are public, a basic check before a large payment is cheap insurance.

The three lists that matter for most payments

1. The EU consolidated financial sanctions list. Browsable through the EU Sanctions Map, with the underlying consolidated list downloadable from the European Commission's Financial Sanctions Files site (a free EU Login account is needed for the files).
2. The UK Sanctions List, published by the FCDO at gov.uk. If you find older tutorials pointing at the separate OFSI consolidated list: that list was withdrawn in January 2026, and the UK Sanctions List is now the place to look.
3. The US OFAC lists, searchable at sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov (the SDN list and the consolidated non-SDN lists). US lists matter even for non-US buyers, because dollar payments and many international banks apply them.

Screen the company's registered name, its trading names, and the directors or managing directors you found in the company register. Screen the people, not just the company: a sanctioned individual behind an unsanctioned shell is the common evasion pattern, and directors are exactly what the registry checks in our country guides surface.

How to read hits, and misses

• Name screening produces false positives. A surname match is a reason to open the list entry and compare dates of birth, addresses, and aliases, not a verdict.
• It also produces false negatives. Lists rely on transliterations, and an entity majority-owned by a listed person may not itself be listed even though paying it can still be prohibited (both the EU and the US apply ownership rules). The public lists cannot show you ownership; company registers sometimes can.
• Lists change weekly. A check is dated evidence of diligence, not permanent clearance. Note what you searched and when.
• A manual name check is practical hygiene, not a compliance determination. If your business has regulatory screening obligations, those need a proper process of their own.

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