Automate UN sanctions screening for customer onboarding, payments and re-screening.
The official United Nations consolidated list synced every 15 minutes to keep pace with new designations.
synced 7 min ago
The United Nations' consolidated list of individuals and entities subject to UN sanctions. Published by the UN Security Council.
If you confirm a match
FreezeFreeze the party's funds and economic resources. Do not make them available. Report to your national authority.
Handle UN sanctions compliance without flooding your team with alerts.
Every UN result includes the exact list version checked, for your audit trail.
We never store the names or personal data you submit for screening.
No downtime when you hit plan limit. Extra usage is billed automatically.
Proprietary fuzzy matching for name variations, backed by IDs and attributes.
Every UN match comes with a score and a human-readable reason.
Average response of ~200 ms, ideal for onboarding and payment screening.
Screen counterparties and transactions wherever compliance decisions happen.
| Use case | Who to screen | When to screen |
|---|---|---|
| Customer onboarding (KYC) | New customers | Before the account is opened |
| Business onboarding (KYB) | Companies, vendors, and UBOs | Before the relationship starts |
| Loan origination | Borrowers | Before a loan is approved |
| Payment processing | Senders and beneficiaries | Before a payment is released |
| Trade and exports | Buyers, consignees, and end users | Before goods are shipped |
| Ongoing re-screening | Existing customers | After each list update |
For developers
Integrate UN screening into your application
with a single POST request.
Your own reference ID comes back with every result
Choose the lists each request screens against
One JSON response with scores, reasons, and list versionExample request
REST API
POST https://api.sanctionslookup.com/v1/screen Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY { "subject": { "subject_ref": "cust_1024", "type": "INDIVIDUAL", "name": "Maria Gonzalez" }, "options": { "sources": ["un_cons"] } }
All plans cover:
OFAC
EU
UN
UK
Canada
Switzerland
Australia1 screening = 1 subject screened. No lock-ins. Never cut off if you go over.
Book a quick call to talk through your setup, or get an API key and
make your first test calls with 100 free requests.
No annual lock-ins
Free tools and guides to improve your sanctions screening.
UN sanctions screening checks customers, counterparties and payments against the UN Security Council Consolidated List. The Security Council adopts sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and Article 25 makes its decisions binding on every UN member state. A listing usually means an asset freeze, often together with a travel ban and an arms embargo.
It combines the sanctions lists kept by each Security Council sanctions committee, such as the 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee and the 1718 Committee on North Korea. Every entry has a permanent reference number in a format like QDi.xxx, the date it was listed, the regime it falls under and the identifiers the committee holds, such as date of birth, nationality and passport numbers.
Every active Security Council regime: ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida, the Taliban, North Korea (DPRK), Libya, Al-Shabaab, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Yemen and Haiti. They range from counter-terrorism and non-proliferation to regional conflicts, and one request screens against all of them.
All 193 UN member states must implement Security Council sanctions through national law, and that law is what binds businesses. Banks, payment and e-money institutions, money services businesses, crypto-asset service providers, insurers and exporters screen against the list as part of AML and sanctions compliance. FATF Recommendations 6 and 7 require targeted financial sanctions on terrorist financing and proliferation financing to be applied without delay.
It closes a gap. The EU and UK add UN listings to their own lists, and OFAC designates many of the same people and entities, but not always at the same time or in the same form. In the EU, new UN listings first appear under the transitional UNLI code before a Council regulation transposes them. Screening the UN list directly catches a new listing before it reaches your national list.
No. The UN publishes the Consolidated List as XML, HTML and PDF files and runs a search page, but offers no screening API. Building your own means parsing the XML, tracking amendments and delistings, and writing name matching that copes with aliases and transliteration. Our API handles all of that and returns scored matches against the current list version.
Compare the identifiers you hold, such as date of birth, place of birth, nationality, passport and national identification numbers, with the list entry. Read the UN's narrative summary of reasons for listing where one is published, as it explains why the person was listed and who they're linked to. If you still can't tell whether it's the same person, contact your national competent authority before releasing any funds.
Yes. UN resolutions extend the freeze to funds and economic resources owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by listed persons, and to anyone acting on their behalf or at their direction. Unlike OFAC and the EU, the UN sets no ownership percentage, so national guidance decides how ownership is assessed. An unlisted subsidiary won't match on its own, so screen beneficial owners (UBOs) as well.
Many UN-listed names are transliterated from Arabic and other scripts and appear in several spellings. The UN lists aliases for most entries, marks them as good quality or low quality, and often includes the name in its original script. The API matches against the primary name and every alias. A hit on a low-quality alias is weak on its own, so confirm it with identifiers before acting.
The Security Council or a sanctions committee decides each change and announces it in a press release, with no fixed schedule. Amendments often add aliases or identifiers to existing entries, so a customer who cleared before can match after an update. Once an entry is delisted, the UN freeze no longer applies, though the same party may still be on national lists. Delisting requests go through the Office of the Ombudsperson for the ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida list, or the Focal Point for Delisting for other regimes.
Only partly. Name screening finds listed individuals and entities, the targets of asset freezes and travel bans. Arms embargoes and sectoral measures, such as the ban on North Korean coal exports and on luxury goods sales to North Korea, apply to goods and destinations rather than names. Exporters need export-control and end-use checks alongside sanctions screening.
Yes, narrow ones. Resolution 1452 (2002) lets states authorize payments for basic expenses, such as food, rent, medicine and legal fees, after notifying the relevant committee, and most regimes have similar provisions. Resolution 2664 (2022) added a humanitarian exemption, so funds needed by humanitarian organizations to deliver aid don't breach UN asset freezes. Exemptions apply after a match is confirmed. They don't replace screening.
SanctionsLookup
