Understanding OpenSanctions data

OpenSanctions collects data about political and economic influence and conflict. In order to correctly describe these real-world structures and the risks associated with them, we use a data model focused on the notion of entities.

Entities have various properties, denoting – for example – their name, creation date, and association with one or more countries. They can also use properties to reference other entities, e.g. a Passport entity will link to its holder. Some relationships are entities in their own right: a Person can be linked to a Company via an Ownership entity, which might document further details, like the time period and ownership percentage.

Learn more #

• See the data dictionary for reference of all available entity types, their possible properties and values.
• See entity risk tagging for how to use this data for common use cases like sanction screening and PEP identification.
• See statement-based data for the more detailed data format providing full provenance linking every property value to its source.
• See the changelog to follow current and planned evolutions of the data model and metadata structure.