Maritime-related sanctions

A shipping-focussed data subset for screening vessels, operators and owners against sanctions.

This collection contains maritime-related sanctions data, featuring vessels, and organizations linked to them. The dataset includes all watchlists that are relevant to maritime operations, ie. that indicate vessels as sanctioned entities.

The CSV data structure is as follows:

  • type: Either VESSEL, or ORGANIZATION. Organizations are only included, if one of our data sources provides an IMO number assigned to that company or entity. All vessels are included in the data export, irrespective of whether an IMO number is available or not.
  • caption: The name of the vessel or organization. See caption on how a name is picked from available candidates.
  • imo: The IMO number of the vessel or organization. This is a unique identifier for vessels and organizations. IMO numbers are assigned by the International Maritime Organization, and different schemes are used for vessels and organizations. If no IMO number is available for a vessel, the field is empty. In those cases, more brittle matching on name may be required.
  • risk: Whether the vessel or organization is directly sanctioned, or is mentioned on a watchlist in a secondary capacity. See topics.
  • countries: All countries that the vessel or organization has been linked to.
  • flag: The flag of the vessel. This is the country that the vessel is registered in.
  • mmsi: The MMSI number of the vessel. This is a unique identifier for vessels, and is assigned by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is used for maritime communication and navigation. If no MMSI number is available for a vessel, the field is empty.
  • id: The OpenSanctions ID for the vessel or organization.
  • url: Link to the OpenSanctions profile regarding the vessel or organization.
  • datasets: The list of datasets that mention the vessel or organization. This is a list of OpenSanctions dataset IDs, and can be used to find out where the data comes from.
  • aliases: A list of all names that are linked to the vessel or organization, except for the name that is used in the name field.

Data overview 

Entities:
Total301,509
Searchable142,150
Targets88,208
Entity types:
People46,489
Addresses21,675
Organizations21,358
Legal entities19,809
Vessels19,279
Companies11,960
Cryptocurrency wallets997
Airplanes344
Securities239
Countries:
217 countries · Show overview...
Coverage:added · frequency: daily
Last processed:
2026-08-01 15:03:01 · v. 20260801150301-kcl
Last change:

Bulk download 

Downloads contain the full set of entities contained in this dataset. You can fetch a simplified tabular form, or detailed, structured data in JSON format. Updated files will be provided once a day at the same location.

File nameExport typeSize
maritime.csvMaritime-centric tabular format4.52 MB

Help: Using the data · model reference · delta updates · support · change log · licensing

Using the API 

You can query the data in this dataset via these API endpoints:

For entity matching, use the /match endpoint:
For full-text search, use the /search endpoint:
Use the Reconciliation API in OpenRefine:

Data sources23 

Maritime-related sanctions is a collection which bundles together entities from 23 data sources. See the source browser for more details...