Sanctions overview

What is inside the LinkinLegal sanctions data, the shape of an entity, and when to use search instead of match.

The Sanctions API holds two bodies of data:

Sanctions lists — people, companies, vessels and aircraft named by an authority. The sources are official lists such as the EU financial sanctions file, the US OFAC SDN list and the UK sanctions list, plus related lists (debarment, export control, disqualification).
PEP lists — politically exposed persons: office holders, their relatives and their close associates.

The two bodies are kept apart. On GET /sanctions/search and on the entity endpoints you pick one with type=sanction (the default) or type=pep. On POST /sanctions/match you pick one or both with include.

Call GET /sanctions/datasets for the live list of source datasets with a description of each. Call GET /sanctions/countries and GET /sanctions/schemas for the values the filters accept.

The shape of an entity

Every record is an entity. It looks like this:

{
  "id": "ru-inn-381205591080",
  "caption": "МАРИНА КОНСТАНТИНОВНА ГУЛИНА",
  "schema": "Person",
  "datasets": ["ann_graph_topics", "ext_ru_egrul"],
  "first_seen": "2026-09-17T23:36:34",
  "last_seen": "2026-09-19T01:56:29",
  "last_change": "2026-09-18T12:56:13",
  "target": true,
  "properties": {
    "name": ["МАРИНА КОНСТАНТИНОВНА ГУЛИНА"],
    "firstName": ["МАРИНА"],
    "lastName": ["ГУЛИНА"],
    "innCode": ["381205591080"]
  }
}

Field	Type	What it is
`id`	string	The stable id of the entity. Store this, not the caption.
`caption`	string	The display name of the record. One name, in the spelling of the source.
`schema`	string	The kind of entity: `Person`, `Company`, `Organization`, `LegalEntity`, `Vessel`, `Airplane`, `Security` and others.
`properties`	object	A map. Every key holds an array of strings, also when there is one value.
`datasets`	array	The source lists this entity comes from.
`target`	boolean	`true` when the entity is itself a subject of a listing. `false` for a supporting record.
`first_seen`	string	When we first loaded the record.
`last_seen`	string	When we last saw the record in its source.
`last_change`	string	When the record last changed. Data freshness uses this.

Properties are always arrays

properties.name can hold 40 spellings of one name. properties.birthDate can hold two dates when the sources disagree. Write your code for the array, never for the first element alone.

The properties you get depend on the source. Common keys are name, alias, birthDate, country, citizenship, gender, address, program, topics, and identifiers such as idNumber, taxNumber, innCode, registrationNumber, leiCode, swiftBic and imoNumber.

GET /sanctions/search returns a smaller entity: id, caption, schema, datasets, last_change and a part of properties. Call GET /sanctions/entities/{id} for the full record, and GET /sanctions/entities/{id}/history for the listing history of that entity (which authority listed it, when it started and when it ended).

Search or match

Both endpoints look for a name, but they answer different questions.

	`GET /sanctions/search`	`POST /sanctions/match`
Question	"Show me records with this text in the name."	"Is this subject on a list?"
Input	A text and filters	A subject: name, birth date, country, identifiers
Name comparison	The text must appear inside the caption	Every name and alias, with typo tolerance and transliteration
Word order	Must be the same	Does not matter
Output	A page of records	Up to 25 candidates, each with a `score` and a `match` flag
Paging	Yes: `page`, `per_page`, `total`	No
Decision	Your user reads the list	Your system reads the score
Bulk	One name per call	Up to 100 subjects per call

Use search for a screen where a person types a name and looks at the results, and for browsing a dataset with filters.

Use match for automatic screening: onboarding, payment checks, nightly rescreening of your customer base.

Search reads the caption only

A record has one caption but many names. search for Путин finds the record with that caption; search for Putin does not find a record whose caption is in Cyrillic. match compares all names and aliases, so it finds it. Do not build a screening decision on search alone.

The shape of an entity

Search or match

Next

Search

Match

Reading a score

Limits

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