Frequently asked questions

The main service provided by OpenSanctions aggregates public lists of people and entities of public interest and makes them usable for screening. We collect public information from many sources, standardize it, and publish it as structured data.

Our PEP coverage works the same way. If there is a reliable and accessible source list, we can ingest it. PEPs are harder than sanctions because there is no single global definition or authoritative master list, and many countries do not publish complete, machine-readable PEP rosters.

Suggesting we add a missing PEP into our collection has a few possible outcomes. If you find a missing PEP, here’s what happens next:

They are on a source we already ingest.

Example: a current member of parliament appears on one of our listed sources, but is missing in OpenSanctions. Action: We treat this as a data issue and investigate and fix it quickly. Please contact support.

They are on a publicly published government list we do not yet ingest.

Action: We evaluate the source and, if it fits our criteria, we add it to our planning backlog for inclusion.

See our contribution page for details on how to submit source suggestions, or contact customer support.

They are not on any government-published list.

Action: The practical route is to add or improve the person’s profile in Wikidata, as Wikidata is one of the upstream sources we use for parts of our PEP coverage. Note: Manual PEP research and profile creation is not part of our commercial service as defined in our Terms and Conditions. We cannot create or verify individual PEP profiles on request, but we welcome source suggestions that expand coverage for all users.