docs / sanctions

Sanctions Screening API

base /sanctions/v14 endpoints

post/sanctions/v1/screen2 credits

Screen ONE name against the official sanctions lists → status (match | possible_match | no_match) + ranked matches with score, matched aliases, programs, DOB/place-of-birth, IDs, and the audit trail (which sources + thresholds were used). Add type/country/dob descriptors to cut false positives.

Parameter		Allowed / range	Description
name	required	—	The person/entity/vessel name to screen. Matching is fuzzy + transliteration-aware (Cyrillic/Arabic/diacritics are folded to ASCII, so Алишер/محمد/Müller match their Latin spellings) and alias-aware (every a.k.a. on a record is screened). Name-only screening is false-positive-heavy — add dob/country/type to narrow.
type	optional	person · entity · vessel · aircraft	Optional entity type. When set, ONLY same-type list records are compared (a person query never matches a vessel record) — the single biggest precision lever. Omit to screen across all types.
country	optional	—	Optional country/nationality descriptor. A match on the record's country / nationality / place-of-birth adds 'country' to matched_fields and boosts the score. A mismatch does NOT exclude (lists are sparsely populated) — it is simply not corroborated.
dob	optional	—	Optional date of birth (full date or just the year). A year match against the record's DOB(s) adds 'dob' to matched_fields and boosts the score. Persons only; ignored for entities/vessels.
threshold = 0.85	optional	0.62–1	Minimum match score (0-1) to surface a candidate. Default 0.85. Lower → higher recall (more false positives); raise toward 0.95 for high-precision exact screening. Scores >= 0.95 are reported as status 'match', between threshold and that as 'possible_match'.
limit = 20	optional	1–100	Max matches to return per name (1-100, default 20), highest score first.
sources	optional	—	Optional comma-separated list of source ids to restrict screening to: ofac_sdn, ofac_consolidated, uk_ofsi. Omit to screen ALL reachable sources (recommended).

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post/sanctions/v1/batch2 credits

Screen up to 100 names in one call (in-memory → cheap). Each item is a string or {name,type?,country?,dob?,threshold?}; per-item options override call defaults.

Parameter		Allowed / range	Description
names	required	—	Up to 100 names to screen in one call. Each item is a string OR an object {name, type?, country?, dob?, threshold?}. Per-item options override the call-level defaults. Screening is in-memory so a batch is cheap.
type	optional	person · entity · vessel · aircraft	Optional entity type. When set, ONLY same-type list records are compared (a person query never matches a vessel record) — the single biggest precision lever. Omit to screen across all types.
country	optional	—	Optional country/nationality descriptor. A match on the record's country / nationality / place-of-birth adds 'country' to matched_fields and boosts the score. A mismatch does NOT exclude (lists are sparsely populated) — it is simply not corroborated.
threshold = 0.85	optional	0.62–1	Minimum match score (0-1) to surface a candidate. Default 0.85. Lower → higher recall (more false positives); raise toward 0.95 for high-precision exact screening. Scores >= 0.95 are reported as status 'match', between threshold and that as 'possible_match'.
limit = 20	optional	1–100	Max matches to return per name (1-100, default 20), highest score first.
sources	optional	—	Optional comma-separated list of source ids to restrict screening to: ofac_sdn, ofac_consolidated, uk_ofsi. Omit to screen ALL reachable sources (recommended).

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post/sanctions/v1/entity1 credit

Fetch ONE full normalized list record by its uid ('<source>:<list_ref>', from a screen match) — every field on the designation.

Parameter		Allowed / range	Description
uid	required	—	The match uid from a screen result ('<source>:<list_ref>', e.g. ofac_sdn:9639) → the full normalized list record.

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post/sanctions/v1/sources_status1 credit

List freshness + reachability of every sanctions source (the trust signal): which lists were screened, how many records, the source's own published date, and whether the last.gov fetch succeeded.

Parameter		Allowed / range	Description
refresh = false	optional	—	Force a re-fetch of all sources before reporting (bypasses the cache; slower).

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Example request · screen

curl -X POST https://api.reefapi.com/sanctions/v1/screen \
  -H "x-api-key: $REEF_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Ismail Haniya","type":"person"}'

Response shape

{
  "ok": true,
  "data": { /* the result */ },
  "meta": {
    "latency_ms": 240,
    "record_count": 12,
    "completeness_pct": 100
  },
  "error": null
}