James Casey, CEO, SanctionCheck. Image Credit: SanctionCheck

• New tool tracks sanctions lists from seven organisations worldwide
• New datasets and functionality being added
• Many bunker credit managers relying on manual checks to avoid potential sanctions breaches
• Learn more at: SanctionCheck.ai

A new company has been launched seeking to help the bunker industry with the increasingly complex problem of keeping track of sanctions affecting its potential customers.

James Casey, CEO of SanctionCheck, founded the company last year to develop a dedicated sanctions compliance platform addressing the operational burden of screening, documentation, and audit defence in the bunker sector, he told Ship & Bunker.

Casey has a background in technology, systems architecture, and user interface development, and has spent many years designing and building solutions for bunkering and maritime-related companies.

He says he saw an opportunity to apply this knowledge to a growing problem for the bunker industry.

"I have a number of relationships in the bunker industry, and as someone who enjoys solving technology problems, it occurred to me, is there a problem I can solve with my understanding of technology and human interface experiences that I can deliver to a wider audience?" he said.

“Sanctions compliance was a recurring theme, with many compliance and credit teams still relying on manual list checks and screenshots to evidence due diligence. As recent geopolitical events demonstrate, sanctions compliance has become faster-moving and more complex, making those manual processes increasingly inadequate.

“SanctionCheck was developed to address these shortcomings, offering a structured compliance system that generates consistent reports, time-stamped records, and a defensible audit trail suitable for insurers, auditors, and regulators.”
 

Sanctions Headaches

Sanctions screening has become a progressively more demanding regulatory requirement and risk management function for bunker suppliers and traders.

Sanctions related to Iran, Russia and other countries have proliferated significantly in recent years, leaving large parts of the market that the mainstream of the bunker industry cannot work with, but it is not always simple to determine which entities are banned by which jurisdictions.

SanctionCheck aggregates major global sanctions regimes into a unified screening platform, enabling entity and vessel checks with downloadable compliance reports designed to support internal controls, audit processes, and regulatory enquiries. Every enquiry generates a time-stamped report referencing the sanctions datasets in force at the time of screening, creating a defensible compliance record over time.

In addition to on-demand screening, the system provides ongoing monitoring functions for ERP data, client and counterparty lists, and vessel records, with real-time alerting when sanctions status changes. This allows compliance officers and credit teams to reduce manual checking and focus on risk assessment and decision-making rather than administrative verification.

The platform incorporates AI-assisted capabilities where appropriate, while core screening logic, sanctions matching, and compliance determinations remain rules-based and subject to structured validation to ensure reliability and eliminate hallucination risk.

"The real core function of this product is the sanctions look-up," Casey said.

"This look-up engine is the same as individually going to various sanction lists.

"To express your compliance for insurers and auditors, rather than taking a screengrab, we can look at how a company matches or doesn't match, and we can download a report.

"It's a way of creating an audit trail for everybody that you want to see."

Nuisance Issue

Sanctions screening is often treated as a necessary but resource-intensive compliance obligation with significant legal and financial consequences if handled inconsistently.

"We are really looking to provide a very focused, robust solution for this - a pain point that is industry-wide - so that people just forget about it and get on with their day," Casey said.

"Everyone has this issue: it's a nuisance issue, and the data is fuzzy. Through various connections I'll see one credit manager say to another, 'is this sanctioned? We've been told it might be.'

"There's a lot of ambiguity between something that's sanctioned or just had adverse news. We aim to provide a reliable compliance reference system that strengthens defensibility, consistency, and audit readiness."

Expanding Scope

The firm currently tracks sanctions lists from seven different organisations:

1. The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
2. The EU
3. The UN
4. The UK
5. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
6. Canada
7. Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)

The OFAC list alone has tens of thousands of entries, with similarly large datasets across other regimes.

"Today, SanctionCheck is a fully developed system in active use by bunker companies," Casey said.

"This year we will continue expanding our data sources and adding additional functionality, guided by users’ needs."

Learn More

Readers interested in learning more and booking a demo can email admin@sanctioncheck.ai or visit: SanctionCheck.ai