
CSSE · Certified Sanctions Screening Expert
Sanctions Red Flags & Evasion Typology Reference
A working reference of the evasion patterns a sanctions screening program has to defend against — name manipulation, intermediaries, structuring, front companies, routing, and document discrepancies — with the specific red-flag indicators investigators look for in each.
Name & Transliteration Manipulation
- A single-character substitution or transposition in an otherwise exact name match, with no other corroborating identifiers on file
- A name rendered in an unusual or inconsistent transliteration compared to how the same underlying name normally appears
- Name order reversed or reformatted in a way that happens to avoid a straightforward field-by-field match
- An alias or "also known as" variant appearing on supporting documents that doesn't match the name used in the transaction itself
Intermediaries & Shell Entities
- A payment purpose (consulting fee, service payment) routed through a third-country entity with no disclosed business relationship or contractual nexus to the underlying activity
- A beneficiary company with no verifiable trading history, physical presence, or public information
- Ownership or control structures that terminate in undisclosed or unverifiable ultimate beneficial owners
- Sudden introduction of a new intermediary into a previously direct payment relationship, with no stated business reason
Structuring Below Screening Thresholds
- Multiple smaller payments to the same or related beneficiaries clustered just under a known threshold
- A pattern of consolidated small payments through a third-country aggregator before a final transfer to the true beneficiary
- Payment timing or sizing that only makes sense as an attempt to avoid a specific control, not as ordinary commercial practice
Front Companies
- A company whose declared business activity does not match the nature or scale of the payments passing through its accounts
- A registered address shared with numerous unrelated entities, or matching a known formation-agent address
- Directors or signatories with no apparent operational role, replaced frequently with no clear reason
Third-Country Routing
- A trade-finance or freight payment routed through a country not appearing anywhere on the shipping manifest
- A correspondent banking chain that includes an unnecessary hop through a high-risk or historically-evasion-linked jurisdiction
- A payment chain that happens to pass through a second, separately sanctioned jurisdiction with no commercial rationale
- Sequential wires through several jurisdictions before reaching a final beneficiary, adding distance without adding commercial substance
Document & Identifier Discrepancies
- A beneficiary or ordering-customer field truncated to a generic placeholder ("Customer," "valued client") rather than a real name
- A cover payment (e.g. MT202COV) with the underlying party details present in the original message but stripped from the cover
- Party details relocated into a non-standard free-text field rather than the structured field a screening filter actually scans
- A SWIFT gpi tracker reference that doesn't match earlier legs of the same payment chain, suggesting the message was altered mid-route
This reference is part of Riskpro's Certified Sanctions Screening Expert (CSSE) programme.
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