Research Domain

Threat Finance and Sanctions

Research on threat-finance networks, sanctions enforcement architecture, and the control structures that make financial denial effective.

OFAC · IEEPA · AML / BSA · CAATSA · FATF
Domain Statement

What this domain covers

Sanctions and illicit finance are treated here as a single problem: money moves through nodes, and enforcement works by identifying which nodes carry load and which controls actually bind. Research in this domain builds the classification structures, control matrices, and evidentiary standards that determine whether a designation, a screening decision, or a counterparty judgment holds up.

Analytic questions

  • Where does threat-finance exposure concentrate in a network, a counterparty, or a portfolio?
  • Which controls bind at which node types, and where do they fail?
  • What evidentiary basis does a designation or enforcement action actually require?
  • How do financial, trade, and jurisdictional instruments combine into coherent pressure?

Methods Applied

  • Node classification and control mapping
  • Beneficial-ownership resolution
  • Tiered evidence standards
  • Falsifiable indicator design

Related Advisory

Standards

Publications

Published work in this domain

Cleared Does Not Mean Examined

Why a compliance screening program can pass every audit and still not detect the thing it exists to catch. A screening program learns only from the counterparties it flags; the ones it clears teach it nothing. The correction is a random-sample audit of cleared counterparties — and this is now a False Claims Act question.
SB-2026-03 · 9 Aug 2026

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