RSSChangelog

We're working on a new major release of FollowTheMoney, the data model underlying OpenSanctions. This major release cleans up some aspects of the domain model. The changes mostly affect schemata not used by OpenSanctions. However, we want to list the relevant upcoming changes here:

• The CryptoWallet:mangingExchange property will be renamed to CryptoWallet:managingExchange. This property is used by the il_mod_crypto dataset. Please update any client/import code reliant on this property to use the new name.
• The Sanction:duration property will change its datatype from string to number. The property values remain strings in the JSON export format, and may still contain a unit specification (eg. 2 years). It is very likely that no action needs to be taken by data consumers.

Non-relevant schema changes:

• The Post and Assessment schemata will be deleted. Both are unused by OpenSanctions.
• Several other properties - not used in OS - will change: License:area (string to number), and the UserAccount:number property will be renamed to UserAccount:phone. The Company:ibcRuc property is to be deleted.

We will provide a more detailed change log when the release is published. This announcement merely serves as an early advisory regarding schema changes.

• FollowTheMoney PR #1749.

In the us_sam_exclusions dataset based off the SAM.gov exclusion and debarment list, the designated entity's UEI is currently stored in the registrationNumber field. Going forward, a new property, called uniqueEntityId is available and will contain these identifiers. Starting Feb 1, 2025, we will then remove the UEI mapping to registrationNumber.

We're phasing out the use of the target flag throughout the system, and switching the export formats that are based on target to use a defined list of topics as their source of truth.

A binary flag (target) is an insufficient method to describe what entities are associated with risk. For the past few months, we've been recommending the use of topics to decide if a match is relevant (e.g. as a PEP, sanctioned entity). However, some export formats - such as targets.nested.json and targets.simple.csv are still using targets to decide which entities to include.

On January 15, we will switch these two export formats (targets.nested.json and targets.simple.csv) to include any entities tagged with one the topics listed below. This is guaranteed to include all current targets, but will bring in additional entities that have topics assigned, but are not marked as targets. In short: the new exports will be more correct, and a bit larger.

This will result in the targets.nested.json export of the default dataset becoming equivalent to the topics.nested.json export of the same collection. This export can be used for testing until the change becomes effective on January 15, 2025. We will eventually remove the topics.nested.json export format on February 15, 2025, and only generated the file named targets.nested.json going forward.

Topics included in new target definition:

• corp.disqual
• crime.boss
• crime.fin
• crime.fraud
• crime.terror
• crime.theft
• crime.traffick
• crime.war
• crime
• debarment
• export.control
• export.risk
• poi
• reg.action
• reg.warn
• role.oligarch
• role.pep
• role.rca
• sanction.counter
• sanction.linked
• sanction
• wanted

The followthemoney data model currently stores the citizenship of individuals in the nationality property. After being advised the the two concepts are not identical in some jurisdictions, we've now also introduced a citizenship property. From the effective date we will begin moving country affiliations for individuals in the citizenship property if that nomenclature is used in the data source (e.g. the UK sanctions list).

Data consumers should check both properties in the future. To get a complete picture of the countries linked to an individual you may also want to check the birthCountry and country field. The latter serves as a catch-all field for affiliations that may not involve citizenship or holding a passport - simple residence might be enough.

See: Person schema.

The permId property for LSEG/Refinitiv company codes has been moved up from the Company to the Organization schema to enable reflecting government entities (using the PublicBody schema) also receiving these identifiers.

A soft length limit in Unicode codepoints has been added for all properties. These can be seen in the data dictionary. The goal of this is to make it easier for data consumers to import our data into systems with fixed-length column types.

Property values are not yet guaranteed to be limited to this value, but our tooling now alerts us when values are longer than this, so that we can identify sources which don’t adhere to sensible limits and eventually enforce hard limits.

Imposing a length limit has also identified many instances where the data required further cleaning, which we've implemented as needed.