Written by: George Reed, GTM Governance, Global
Many governments around the world have enacted financial sanctions and/or trade restrictions against persons or entities engaged in activities deemed to be detrimental to national security. Sanctions or trade restrictions may be imposed related to criminal activity, drug trade, money laundering, trade regulation violations, terrorism, weapons proliferation, UN Security Council actions, and a number of other reason.
Typically, governments publish sanctions lists on official public websites, and subsequently issue public notifications when amendments are made to their lists. The names of restricted persons or entities are added and removed on a daily basis, affecting a number of lists. Some names are included within multiple lists, across governments. There are lists maintained by individual country governments, and there are also multinational lists issued by Interpol, the UN Security Council, or the European Union, for example. Individual governments may enact multiple lists; the United States is the most prolific when it comes to sanctions listings. The number governments imposing sanctions and the high level of activity indicate the seriousness attached to the subject of sanctions and the need for restricted party screening (RPS).
Ignoring the lists has serious consequences
Penalties for violating sanctions and conducting business with restricted parties can be rather severe. Violators may incur substantial monetary fines, loss of export privileges, as well as reputational damage. For this reason, companies that are engaged in international trade need to be aware of sanctions and trade restrictions so that they can comply with legal government requirements. This is especially true for multinational corporations, since they are most likely to be impacted by sanction regulations. Therefore, a global approach to RPS makes sense. Livingston International provides comprehensive screening software and restricted party screening services to satisfy this compliance need. We monitor for new sanctions and for changes to existing sanctions around the globe on a constant basis.
New restricted party screening list
Livingston International has added a new restricted party list to our TradeSphere RPS and TradeSphere Exporter software applications. This most recent addition to the aggregate set of government-published restricted party lists is known as the “DNT”, Dutch National Terrorism list, a national screening list covering financial sanctions maintained by the Government of the Netherlands. This is a unique restricted party list that is not redundant with European Union-published sanctions. For this reason, we recommend that users of TradeSphere RPS or TradeSphere Exporter include this DNT list along with the other lists they have selected for screening purposes.