Sanctions Screening SOP
Standard operating procedure for sanctions screening on a digital assets/tokenization platform: onboarding, periodic and event-driven re-screening, transactional checks (fiat & on-chain), hit resolution, escalations, freezes, and reporting.
Contents (short)
- Scope & regimes: UN, EU, UK (OFSI), US (OFAC) + local; sectoral/country restrictions.
- Roles & responsibilities: MLRO/CO, Compliance, Ops, Tech/Sec, Internal Audit.
- Triggers: onboarding, periodic sweep, profile changes, list updates, transactional (pre/post).
- Alert queues: sanctions/PEP/adverse segregation, crypto-specific flags (mixers, clusters).
- Hit resolution framework: Strong / Medium / Weak → actions & SLAs.
- Escalations & approvals: MLRO, senior management, Legal involvement.
- Asset freeze/blocking: holds, wallet controls, API disable, evidence capture.
- Reporting: FIU STR/SAR, OFAC/OFSI/EU notifications, regulator incidents.
- Comms & tipping-off controls: neutral wording; comms log.
- False positives & whitelisting: rationale, expiry, periodic review.
- Country/sector/crypto restrictions: configuration & update cadence.
- Recordkeeping: list versions, case files, approvals, reports, audit trail.
- QA & metrics: review times, FP rate, escalation turnaround, completeness.
- Training & testing: annual training, scenario drills, independent testing.
- Annexes: process steps, decision matrix, case log template, list/country registers, comms snippets, glossary.
Download & next steps
Download the SOP and adjust thresholds, list refresh cadence, crypto-specific typologies, and reporting lines to your regulator and stack. We can align it to your license scope.