Download the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list in XML or CSV format from the U.S. Treasury's official distribution endpoint; schedule daily automated refresh.
Parse the SDN list into a searchable data structure indexed by name, alias, and entity identifier; normalize names by removing punctuation and standardizing Unicode.
For each new contract or counterparty, run a fuzzy name match against the SDN index (e.g., Jaro-Winkler or trigram similarity) with a configurable match threshold; also check country of incorporation against sanctioned jurisdictions.
Flag any match above the threshold as a potential hit and place the contract in a compliance review queue; do not auto-approve contracts with unresolved hits.
Integrate with a commercial sanctions screening API (e.g., Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, LexisNexis, or Refinitiv) for higher confidence screening if volume warrants it.
Escalate all potential matches to a compliance officer or qualified lawyer; document the screening result, date, and reviewer in the contract audit log regardless of outcome.
Known gotchas
Name-only matching produces high false-positive rates; always combine name matching with additional identifiers (country, address, date of birth for individuals) to reduce false positives before escalating.
OFAC list updates can occur multiple times per day during active designations; a daily refresh may miss intraday additions — consider near-real-time polling or subscribing to OFAC's RSS feed for critical workflows.
Screening only at contract creation is insufficient; re-screen existing counterparties periodically, as entities can be added to the SDN list after a contract is executed.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp