Straife
Geopolitical Strategy

Sanctions & Export Controls

Find the Exposure Before a Regulator Does.

A 4–8 week review across sanctions regimes and export controls that goes past name screening — into ownership structures, technology transfer, and the parts of your supply chain you never contracted with.

4–8 Weeks

Duration

OFAC · EU · UN · UK

Regimes

Exposure Map

Output

Scope of Review

Where the Exposure Actually Hides

Screening software clears the names on your list against the names on theirs. It does not trace ownership through three holding companies, classify the technology your engineers emailed to an overseas affiliate, or tell you who your distributor sold to last quarter. Those are the places exposure is usually found.

Regimes

Multi-Jurisdiction Regime Mapping

Which sanctions regimes bind you and why — OFAC through US nexus, the EU and UK regimes through establishment, currency, or nationality of personnel, and UN measures as implemented in each jurisdiction where you operate. Regimes rarely align, and the review identifies where their obligations diverge for your specific business.

Ownership

Ownership & Control Tracing

Tracing beneficial ownership through holding structures, nominee arrangements, and layered corporate vehicles to identify entities that are restricted by virtue of their owners rather than by listing — the aggregation principle commonly referred to as the 50 percent rule — together with the indicators of de facto control that sit outside any list.

Export Controls

Export Controls & Technology Transfer

Classification exposure under the EAR and, where relevant, the ITAR: dual-use items, controlled software and technology, deemed export risk within your own workforce, re-export and de minimis pathways through your distribution chain, and the technology your engineers share with overseas affiliates as a matter of routine.

Supply Chain

Supply Chain & Distributor Exposure

Where restricted parties sit two and three tiers away from your direct relationships — sub-suppliers, freight forwarders, resellers, and end users you never contracted with. Includes diversion-risk patterns in your distributor network and the contractual controls that would let you act on what you find.

Transactions

Sanctions Inheritance Risk

What you would be acquiring along with a target: historical dealings that create successor liability, restricted counterparties inside its book of business, unremediated conduct, and licensing dependencies that do not transfer cleanly. Sequenced to sit inside a live deal timetable where required.

This review is advisory work produced to be used by your legal team — it is not legal advice and does not replace counsel. Where the finding is a program problem rather than a discrete exposure, it hands off to compliance; where a government or supervisory body is the client, to financial crime and anticorruption.

The Deliverable

Findings You Can Act On and Defend

Everything we deliver is built so that a compliance officer can execute against it and a general counsel can put it in front of a board or a regulator without rewriting it first.

Output 01

Exposure Map

A documented view of every point where your operations touch a restricted party, a controlled item, or a sanctioned jurisdiction — organized by entity, relationship, and regime, with the evidence behind each finding attached. Written to be handed directly to counsel or to a regulator.

Output 02

Prioritized Remediation Plan

Findings ranked by severity and by how quickly they can be closed. Each item states the exposure, the recommended remediation, the internal owner, and the sequence — so a compliance team with finite capacity knows what to do on Monday.

Output 03

Escalation Triggers

A defined set of conditions that should stop a transaction, freeze a relationship, or reach the general counsel immediately — written as thresholds someone can apply in the moment, and mapped to the people who hold the authority to act on each.

Output 04

Control Gap Assessment

Where your existing screening, onboarding, and classification controls would have failed to catch what the review found — with specific recommendations on process, data, and contractual language.

The Engagement

How the Review Is Run

Four to eight weeks depending on the number of entities, the complexity of the ownership structures, and whether export control classification is in scope. Work is conducted under confidentiality throughout and can be run at the direction of counsel where privilege considerations apply.

01

Scoping & Data Capture

Weeks 1–2

Nexus analysis to establish which regimes apply and why. Capture of counterparty registers, product and technology catalogs, distributor agreements, and existing screening output. We work from your actual records.

02

Screening & Tracing

Weeks 2–5

Structured screening across applicable lists, followed by ownership tracing through corporate registries, control analysis, adverse media review, and classification assessment of controlled items and technology.

03

Findings & Prioritization

Weeks 5–7

Every hit is adjudicated. False positives are cleared and documented; genuine exposures are assessed for severity, and the remediation plan is sequenced against your capacity to execute it.

04

Delivery & Handover

Weeks 7–8

Working session with legal and compliance, then delivery of the exposure map, remediation plan, escalation triggers, and control gap assessment. Where the findings need to go to counsel or to a board committee, we help you frame them.

Get Started

What prompted the question?

A new designation, a pending transaction, a distributor you are no longer sure about, or a board asking whether anyone has checked. Tell us which, and we will scope the review around it.

All Geopolitical Services

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