Build an OFAC Vendor Review Workflow

Vendor onboarding often begins with a legal name, country, registration number, owners, and addresses. OFAC's public rows are an important input, but a safe workflow must distinguish record retrieval from identity resolution. The OFAC Sanctions Scraper handles the first step and preserves the official evidence.

Create targeted candidate searches

Search the legal name and one or two distinctive variations separately. Keep the lists broad unless policy calls for a narrower program scope.

{
  "queries": ["Northstar Maritime", "Northstar Shipping"],
  "listType": "both",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Export the resulting UIDs, names, programs, remarks, entity types, vessel fields, and list origins into a review table. Add internal columns for vendor ID, submitted legal name, jurisdiction, reviewer, disposition, rationale, and review time. Do not overwrite the published values with internal conclusions.

Separate candidates from decisions

An exact spelling can still be a different party. A transliteration or alias can refer to the same party despite different text. Reviewers need the full official entry plus reliable vendor identity evidence and the organization's matching rules.

Define outcomes such as cleared, escalated, confirmed, or insufficient information. Require a source link and rationale for every disposition. If a record changes later, the retained UID makes it possible to identify which decisions relied on an earlier version.

Schedule separate monitoring Tasks for high-risk keywords or programs rather than rerunning every onboarding search continuously. When monitoring finds an addition, join it back to active vendor identities and reopen only relevant cases. This keeps the workflow auditable and prevents a simple keyword tool from silently becoming an automated rejection system.