In order to determine the nature of the risk linked to an entity in OpenSanctions, you can rely on various forms of tags that detail the reason for the entity's inclusion in the database. This page explains how to find what you are looking for, and make sense of what you find.

Topics

Topics are used to classify entities and indicate why they are included in a dataset. They can be used to determine the level and type of risk they represent. Some key topics include:

ID	Description
sanction	Sanctioned entities: Companies, people or other things that have been designated by a government in order to prohibit specific interactions with them.
sanction.linked	Sanction-linked entities: Companies, people or other things that have a direct relationship with a sanctioned entity. The topic also covers companies which are indirect subsidiaries of sanctioned entities, irrespective of the percentage ownership stake the sanctioned entity holds in the subsidiary.
sanction.counter	Counter-sanctioned: The database covers some sanctions lists from non-democratic countries which issue their own sanctions designations, often including pro-democracy activists, journalists, and human rights proponents (as well as Paul Wolfowitz).
debarment	Debarred entities: Companies that have been excluded from public procurement, often because they previously committed fraud in their execution of a government contract.
role.pep	Politically exposed persons: Currently or previously held a position of political influence. We document our global coverage and data methodology regarding PEPs.
role.rca	Relatives and close associates: Family members and key business associates of politically exposed persons. They are often used as nominees or front-people when a PEP attempts to hide illicit financial gains.
poi	Persons of interest: People where there is a public interest case for closer scrutiny, but who do not meet common definitions of a politically-exposed person and who are not sanctioned.
reg.action	Regulatory action: Companies that have been the subject of an enforcement action by an industry regulatory body.
reg.warn	Regulatory warning: Companies that have placed on a warning/alert list by an industry regulatory body.

For a full list of topics, see the data dictionary.

Politically exposed persons

Politically-exposed persons can be sub-divided into different sub-types, depending on the level or branch of government they are active in. This information is also represented in OpenSanctions using topics. For more context on how we collect and structure PEP information, see our introduction page.

Topics linked to people

Basic information about a PEP position is represented on the Person entity itself:

• All PEPs have the role.pep topic in their topics property.
• All countries related to their PEP positions are added to their country property.

Topics linked to political positions

More detail is available about the positions. This can be used to exclude certain positions based on the risk policy of your use case. This data is applied consistently when available in structured form, so that the same policies can be applied across jurisdictions as needed.

A Person is used to describe the politician themselves. When using the nested entity representation in the OpenSanctions API or the targets.nested.json format, each person entity's positionOccupancies property refers to all the instances of this person occupying PEP positions.

The Occupancy entity creates a link between a person and the Position have held. Additionally, depending on available data, it includes:

• startDate - when this person started occupying this position
• endDate - when this person left the position
• status - whether the position is currently occupied. See methodology and possible values.

The Position entity classifies the nature of the position itself. A position is always specific to a given jurisdiction, e.g. Member of parliament in India is distinct from the Member of parliament position in Kenya. Position entities are further classified by the following properties:

• All countries related to a given position are added to the country property
• When possible, the specific subnational area is indicated in the subnationalArea property for subnational and local positions.
• Position entities have topics classifying the position according to the type and level of government they are linked to:

Key PEP categories	Role	Jurisdiction
National head of government, head of state (President, prime minister, queen)	gov.head	gov.national
National executive/cabinet	gov.executive	gov.national
National legislature	gov.legislative	gov.national
National court judges, prosecutors	gov.judicial	gov.national
Security and intelligence services including militaty, police	gov.security	gov.national
Central Bank leadership	gov.financial	gov.national
Diplomatic missions	role.diplo	gov.national
Intergovernmental organizations generally		gov.igo
e.g. Member of European Parliament	gov.legislative	gov.igo
e.g. Member of Board of Governors of the World Bank	gov.financial	gov.igo
Regional/sub-national head of government (Governor, Premier)	gov.head	gov.state
Regional/sub-national executive/cabinet	gov.executive	gov.state
Regional/sub-national legislature	gov.legislative	gov.state
Regional/sub-national court judges	gov.judicial	gov.state
State-owned enterprises, public entities, agencies reporting to national government	gov.soe	gov.national
State-owned enterprises, public entities, agencies reporting to regional government	gov.soe	gov.state
Political party leadership	pol.party
Local head of government (Mayor)	gov.head	gov.muni
Local executive (e.g. mayoral committee member)	gov.executive	gov.muni
Local legislature	gov.legislative	gov.muni

The topic representing the greatest influence is used when a position might apply to multiple roles or jurisdictions, e.g. executive is used when both legislative and executive apply.