Is your supplier sanctioned? Red flags and how to check

Why suppliers matter as much as customers

Many companies think of sanctions as a sales problem: do not sell to the wrong buyer. Paying a supplier is just as sensitive. Every payment makes funds available to someone, and if that someone is a listed party or a company it controls, your company can be exposed to fines, frozen payments and questions from your bank. The goods you bought may also be seized or impossible to import.

Suppliers are often onboarded quickly, by people under pressure to secure materials or a better price. That is exactly when checks are skipped.

What are the red flags in the company itself?

• Owners or managers that are hard to identify, or a chain of companies in several countries with no clear business reason.
• A recently created company with little history offering unusually good prices or asking for large orders.
• A name very similar to a company that appears on a sanctions list, or a recent change of name.
• Addresses that are only a registered office service, or contact details shared with other unrelated companies.
• Reluctance to provide basic documents such as registration certificates or the list of shareholders.

What are the red flags in the deal?

• Requests to pay, or to receive payment, through a third party that has nothing to do with the contract.
• Requests to change the buyer, the consignee or the destination at the last minute.
• Shipping routes through countries that make no commercial sense for the goods.
• Reluctance to say who will use the product in the end, or vague answers about the end use.
• Pressure to close quickly and skip the usual paperwork.

A single sign can have an innocent explanation. Several together deserve a closer look.

What should you do when you see a red flag?

1. Pause the deal before signing, shipping or paying.
2. Check the company, its owners and its managers against the official sanctions lists, including name variants and transliterations.
3. Ask the counterparty for the missing information in writing and keep the answers.
4. Decide with your legal or compliance advisers whether to go ahead, ask for more, or stop.
5. Record what you checked, the sources and the decision, with the date.

The record matters. If a question ever comes from an authority, a bank or an auditor, being able to show what you checked and why you decided is a strong position.

How to check if a supplier is sanctioned in minutes

With Unicorn Intelligence you do not need to search each name by hand:

1. Sign up with your business email or a Google or Apple account. No card is needed and you receive a $50 credit as a gift.
2. Connect your CRM (HubSpot, or other tools through Zapier), or upload your suppliers from Google Sheets, Excel or a CSV file.
3. Run the free scan of your contacts to see how many possible matches your list contains.
4. Turn on daily screening so that suppliers listed later are caught too, with instant alerts by email, Slack or webhook.
5. For a supplier that raised a red flag, open the full company report to see the group structure where data is available.

The lists we check are read live from the screening engine:

Screening lists loaded today

For the step by step setup with your CRM, see how to screen your CRM for sanctions every day.

What does the check cover?

Every name goes through these checks, kept in sync with the screening engine:

Every name goes through all these checks, for free. Before monitoring you see only the numbers; with monitoring each name shows which check it hit, with source, list, date and similarity.

• OFAC SDN list (United States): People and companies whose assets are blocked by the US Treasury: any dealing is prohibited.
• EU financial sanctions: The consolidated list of people and companies under asset freeze in the European Union.
• UN Security Council: The consolidated list of the United Nations Security Council, applied by member states.
• UK Sanctions List: The official United Kingdom list of people and companies under financial sanctions.
• OFAC non SDN lists (United States): US sectoral sanctions and sanctions evaders: some operations are prohibited, others allowed.
• US Consolidated Screening List: Export restriction lists of the US Commerce and State Departments, including the Entity List and the Denied Persons List.
• Forced labour list (UFLPA): Companies whose goods cannot be imported into the United States because of forced labour.
• High-risk countries: A signal for contacts in countries on the black and grey lists of the FATF (the international anti money laundering body) and in countries under embargo.
• Other national sanctions lists: Switzerland (SECO), Canada and Australia: they matter if you export there.
• Debarment from public contracts: Companies excluded by the World Bank and other development banks for fraud or corruption, and the SAM list of parties excluded from US public contracts.
• US anti money laundering: Parties named by FinCEN (the anti money laundering authority of the US Treasury) as a "primary money laundering concern", with which US banks cannot operate.
• Politically exposed persons: Directors who are politicians or their relatives. Free sources are incomplete, so this is shown as "possible", never as a certainty.

Red flags and responsibility

No tool sees everything. Unicorn Intelligence screens the names you give it against official lists and explains each possible match, but the program can make mistakes, and hidden ownership does not always appear in public data. Important matches should be verified, and final responsibility for compliance stays with your company.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if a supplier is sanctioned?

Check its name, aliases, owners and managers against the official sanctions lists and repeat the check regularly. Unicorn Intelligence does it every day for every company in your CRM, starting with a free scan of your contacts.

What are the main sanctions red flags?

Unclear ownership, payments through unrelated third parties, last minute changes of buyer, consignee or destination, illogical shipping routes and vague answers about end use.

Is a red flag enough to refuse a supplier or customer?

Not by itself. It is a signal to investigate. The decision belongs to your company, ideally with the help of your legal or compliance advisers.

Can Unicorn Intelligence detect hidden owners?

It screens the names you give it and the companies in your CRM against official lists, and the full company report shows the group structure where data is available. No tool sees everything, and the program can make mistakes.

Why do suppliers need screening as well as customers?

Because paying a sanctioned supplier makes funds available to a listed party, which can lead to fines, frozen payments and problems with your bank.

Sanctions and risk lists: what they are and how to check them

• OFAC SDN list
• EU financial sanctions list
• UN Security Council consolidated list
• UK Sanctions List
• OFAC non SDN lists
• US Consolidated Screening List
• UFLPA Entity List
• Canada consolidated autonomous sanctions list (SEMA)
• Australia DFAT consolidated list
• Switzerland SECO sanctions list
• Debarment lists (World Bank and SAM)
• FinCEN section 311 special measures
• FATF high risk and monitored countries
• Politically exposed persons (PEP)