Open-source sanctions screening platform. A free, open alternative to commercial watchlist screening solutions. Sieve fetches publicly available sanctions lists, normalizes them into a unified entity model, indexes them in memory, and exposes both a CLI and a REST API for screening names.

Supported Sanctions Lists

25 providers across 20 jurisdictions. All lists are fetched from official government endpoints, parsed into a unified entity model, and indexed in memory for screening.

International

Provider	Source	Format	Entities
UN Consolidated	UN Security Council	XML	~800

North America

Provider	Source	Format	Entities
OFAC SDN	U.S. Treasury — Specially Designated Nationals	XML	~12,000
OFAC Non-SDN	U.S. Treasury — Non-SDN Consolidated	XML	~600
US Trade CSL	U.S. Commerce Dept — Consolidated Screening List	JSON	~12,500
Canada Consolidated	Global Affairs Canada (SEMA, FACFOA, Terrorists)	XML	~2,700

Europe

Provider	Source	Format	Entities
EU Consolidated	European Commission — Financial Sanctions	XML	~5,900
EU Journal	EU Official Journal designations	XML	~5,900
EU Sanctions Map	EU Sanctions Map API	JSON	~1,000
EU Travel Bans	EU Travel Bans list	XML	~5,900
UK HMT	HM Treasury — Financial Sanctions	XML	~4,000
CH SECO	Switzerland — State Secretariat for Economic Affairs	XML	~5,700
FR Trésor	France — Direction Générale du Trésor	JSON	~6,000
BE FOD	Belgium — FOD/SPF Finance	JSON	~800
PL MSWiA	Poland — Ministry of Interior and Administration	HTML	~560
LV FIU	Latvia — Financial Intelligence Unit	XML	~160
MC Fund Freezing	Monaco — Budget and Treasury Dept	JSON	~6,000
MD Terror	Moldova — Security and Intelligence Service	XLSX	~710

Asia-Pacific

Provider	Source	Format	Entities
AU DFAT	Australia — Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade	XLSX	~900
NZ Russia	New Zealand — Russia Sanctions Register	JSON	~1,900
JP MoF	Japan — Ministry of Finance	CSV	~4,200

Middle East & Africa

Provider	Source	Format	Entities
IL WMD/Terror	Israel — NBCTF (Counter Terror Financing)	XLSX	~900
TR MASAK	Turkey — Financial Crimes Investigation Board	XLSX	~1,800
QA NCTC	Qatar — National Counter Terrorism Committee	XML	~800
ZA FIC	South Africa — Financial Intelligence Centre	XML	~800

Not Yet Available

Provider	Source	Status
UA NSDC	Ukraine — National Security and Defence Council	⏸ Requires API key (email sanctions@rnbo.gov.ua)

Architecture

graph LR
    CLI[sieve-cli] --> MATCH[sieve-match]
    VERTX[sieve-server] --> MATCH
    SPRING[sieve-spring-server] --> MATCH
    MATCH --> CORE[sieve-core]
    MATCH --> INGEST[sieve-ingest]
    VERTX --> INGEST
    SPRING --> INGEST
    CLI --> INGEST
    INGEST --> CORE

Loading

sieve/
├── sieve-core/              # Zero-dependency domain module
├── sieve-address/           # Address normalization (libpostal)
├── sieve-ingest/            # List fetchers and parsers
├── sieve-match/             # Matching engine implementations
├── sieve-server/            # High-performance Vert.x REST API
├── sieve-spring-server/     # Spring Boot REST API (PostgreSQL, Swagger, scheduling)
├── sieve-cli/               # Command-line interface
├── sieve-benchmark/         # Performance benchmarks
└── pom.xml                  # Parent POM

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Java 21+
• Maven 3.9+

Build

mvn clean verify

CLI Usage

# Fetch all enabled sanctions lists
java -jar sieve-cli/target/sieve-cli-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar fetch

# Screen a name
java -jar sieve-cli/target/sieve-cli-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar screen "John Doe"

# Screen with options
java -jar sieve-cli/target/sieve-cli-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar screen "John Doe" --threshold=0.85 --list=ofac-sdn

# View index statistics
java -jar sieve-cli/target/sieve-cli-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar stats

Exit codes: 0 = no match, 1 = match found, 2 = error (CI/CD friendly).

REST API

Two server implementations are available with identical API endpoints:

Server	Module	Use case
Vert.x	sieve-server	Maximum throughput, minimal overhead, in-memory only
Spring Boot	sieve-spring-server	PostgreSQL persistence, Swagger, scheduled refresh, actuator

# Option 1: Vert.x (high-performance)
java -jar sieve-server/target/sieve-server-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

# Option 2: Spring Boot (full-featured)
java -jar sieve-spring-server/target/sieve-spring-server-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

The Vert.x server accepts CLI flags and environment variables:

java -jar sieve-server/target/sieve-server-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar \
  --port 9090 --threshold 0.85 --eu true --uk true

Flag	Env var	Default
--port	SIEVE_PORT	8080
--threshold	SIEVE_THRESHOLD	0.80
--max-results	SIEVE_MAX_RESULTS	50
--ofac	SIEVE_OFAC_ENABLED	true
--eu	SIEVE_EU_ENABLED	false
--un	SIEVE_UN_ENABLED	false
--uk	SIEVE_UK_ENABLED	false

Endpoints

# Screen a name
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/screen \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "John Doe", "threshold": 0.80}'

# List status
curl http://localhost:8080/api/v1/lists

# Refresh lists
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/lists/refresh

# Health check
curl http://localhost:8080/api/v1/health

Matching Algorithms

• Exact Match — Normalized case-insensitive exact comparison (score: 1.0 or 0.0)
• Fuzzy Match — Jaro-Winkler similarity (implemented from scratch, no external dependencies)
• Composite — Runs both engines, deduplicates by entity, keeps highest score

Configuration

• Vert.x server — configured via CLI flags and environment variables (see table above)
• Spring Boot server — see sieve-spring-server/src/main/resources/application.yml

Docker

# Spring Boot server (with PostgreSQL)
docker compose up sieve-spring-server

# Vert.x server (standalone, in-memory)
docker compose up sieve-server

Tech Stack

• Java 21 — Records, sealed interfaces, pattern matching, virtual threads
• Vert.x 4.5 + Netty — High-performance server (event-loop, zero-copy I/O)
• Spring Boot 3.3 — Full-featured server (PostgreSQL, Swagger, scheduling)
• Picocli — CLI framework (no Spring dependency)
• StAX — Streaming XML parsing for large sanctions lists
• Jackson — JSON parsing
• Apache POI — XLSX spreadsheet parsing
• Playwright — Headless browser for JS-rendered sites (TR MASAK, IL NBCTF)
• JUnit 5 + AssertJ — Testing (parallel execution)

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.