Tool 01 · The dashboard in depth
The world’s dominant compliance databases aggregate designations from hundreds of sources — including authoritarian regimes — without any human rights verification layer. The Financial Transnational Repression Dashboard adds that layer: tracking indicators of abuse, flagging the systemic misuse of designation mechanisms, and surfacing suspicious listings, so institutions can make informed decisions instead of defaulting to blanket de-risking.
The challenge
The three dominant compliance data providers — Dow Jones, LexisNexis and LSEG — aggregate designations from hundreds of sources without a human rights verification layer. When Russia labels a dissident a terrorist, or Belarus designates a human rights organisation as extremist, that designation flows automatically into global banking. The process is over 95% automated.
Sanction programs and designation lists have become a tool of financial transnational repression. Regimes extend repression globally — against journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders — while remaining within the international legal framework.
“In the Western financial system, everyone on a terror list looks equally risky, whether they are a Russian political prisoner or an ISIS fighter.” Without context, institutions cannot tell a politically motivated listing from a genuine threat.
Steep fines punish missed risks, but no penalty exists for excess of caution. If in doubt, it is easier for a bank to turn down the client than to investigate — so accounts are frozen and people are de-banked.
Neither the FATF nor domestic regulators have disseminated risks, typologies or red flags for money laundering associated with international crimes, leaving regulated businesses without guidance.
The same blind spot lets the proceeds and instrumentalities of international crimes and gross human rights violations move through the global banking system undetected.
Institutions are increasingly called out and face scrutiny for enabling abuse, yet have no methodology to identify or manage that exposure because the human rights intelligence that would make it visible does not exist in their infrastructure.
Use cases
The dashboard focuses on the category of designations for which financial institutions apply a discretionary approach — foreign designations not mirrored in EU sanctions, and the adverse-media, PEP and risk-flag signals that feed risk assessment without carrying an automatic freezing obligation.
When a client appears on a foreign designation list that is not mirrored in EU sanctions, the dashboard provides the context to investigate rather than reflexively turn the client away, reducing blanket de-risking.
Teams get a verified assessment of whether a specific designation by a specific regime is politically motivated, supporting AML, KYC and sanctions-screening decisions that stand up to scrutiny.
Human rights actors use the dashboard to track indicators of abuse, identify suspicious listings, and build the evidence base needed to report misuse of AML/CFT frameworks — at a subsidised cost.
Regulators and Financial Intelligence Units draw on pattern analysis of systematic abuse to identify the typologies and red flags associated with funding or profiting from international crimes.
The dashboard connects corporate ownership structures and financial flows to documented violations, identified perpetrators and ongoing accountability processes — intelligence that corporate-accountability and financial-crime cases require.
Benefits
The market already has data aggregation, transaction-pattern detection, entity-network mapping and ESG keyword screening. This product adds the missing human rights context.
Manage exposure to financial flows linked to international crimes and human rights violations, with greater alignment to international law and FATF recommendations.
Investigate suspicious listings with context instead of defaulting to blanket de-risking — retaining legitimate clients and the market they represent.
Avoid being implicated in financial transnational repression or in the laundering of proceeds originating from crimes against humanity.
Effective information-sharing lets NGOs and financial institutions contribute their respective expertise to detect and report abuse of AML/CFT frameworks.
A structured, continuously updated database keeps pattern analysis and verified assessments current as designations and regimes evolve.
Designed to surface at the point of a compliance decision — alongside the databases teams already use — rather than requiring a separate platform.
The dashboard
Verified intelligence — the framework applied to real entities, flows, designations and cases — delivered into the decisions clients are already making.
Focus: foreign designations not mirrored in EU sanctions — for example from Russia and Belarus — plus the adverse media, PEP status and FIU risk flags that feed risk assessment without an automatic freezing obligation.
Built for financial institutions, compliance teams, regulators, FIUs, law firms and litigation actors — and for the human rights actors whose work it strengthens.
Example case study
An illustrative walk-through of how the dashboard turns an automated red flag into an informed decision. Details are anonymised and representative.
During onboarding, a European bank’s screening tool returns a hit: the prospective client appears on a foreign list, labelled “extremist” by an authoritarian regime. The designation is not mirrored in EU sanctions, so no automatic freezing obligation applies — it is a discretionary call.
“If in doubt, it’s easier for the bank to simply turn down the client rather than waste resources on investigations.” The blanket de-risking the dashboard is built to replace.
The compliance officer queries the dashboard. It returns a verified assessment: the designating regime has a documented pattern of labelling journalists and human rights organisations as extremists, the listing matches known indicators of transnational repression, and the individual is the subject of credible human rights reporting — not genuine security concerns.
Armed with context, the bank can onboard the client with appropriate, proportionate controls instead of de-banking them — documenting a defensible, human-rights-aligned decision that satisfies regulators and avoids becoming an instrument of repression.
The flagged pattern feeds back into the dashboard’s intelligence, helping NGOs document the abuse and giving other institutions an earlier, sharper signal the next time the same tactic appears.
Get in touch
Whether you are a financial institution, a regulator, a law firm or an NGO, we would like to understand the exposure you are managing and walk you through the dashboard.
Keep exploring
The dashboard is one of two services. Our investigation and strategic litigation practice uses AML legislation to hold accountable those who launder the proceeds of international crimes.