Government Trade Enforcement

Illicit trade networks have corporate structures.

Narcotics, dual-use goods, and sanctions evasion all rely on legitimate-looking corporate networks. Sayari’s world model maps ownership chains, trade flows, and financial relationships – turning trade manifest data into actionable enforcement targets.

THE REGULATORY REALITY

42%

of major trade enforcement actions in 2024 involved entities with no prior sanctions or enforcement history. Reactive, list-based screening consistently fails to flag novel networks before they operate.

CBP/BIS Enforcement Data 2024 · Sayari Research

THE PROBLEM

Why trade enforcement misses novel networks

The structural gaps that point solutions can’t close.

Clean-company layering

Illicit actors register clean intermediary companies specifically to move controlled goods. These entities have no prior enforcement history, making list-based screening ineffective by design.

Ownership opacity at scale

A single enforcement target may control hundreds of nominally independent trading entities across a dozen jurisdictions. Investigators can’t manually map this network in time to interdict.

Data fragmentation

Trade manifest data, corporate registry records, and financial intelligence are held in separate systems. Without integration, analysts can’t see the full network picture.

THE SAYARI APPROACH

Corporate network intelligence for trade enforcement.

Sayari integrates corporate registry data from 250+ jurisdictions with global trade flow records – giving enforcement analysts the full ownership and shipment picture in a single interface.

Network-First Investigation

Start from any company, individual, or shipment and traverse ownership, co-directorship, and trade relationships to map the full network.

Trade Flow Pattern Analysis

Sayari Map highlights anomalous trade patterns – unusual commodity-country combinations, atypical routing, and volume spikes – linked to corporate ownership chains.

Cross-Jurisdiction Entity Matching

Resolve entities across naming conventions, scripts, and jurisdictions to identify the same beneficial owner operating across multiple registrations.

Bulk Screening for Enforcement Lists

Screen full cargo manifests or counterparty lists against Sayari’s integrated denial, sanctions, and enforcement databases in seconds.

shipment_analysis.log

> Shipment Intelligence Analysis

manifest: “SHL-2024-09187 (HTS 8542.31)”
declared_origin: Malaysia (MYS)
✓ 847 records matched · 12 trade routes
⚠ Transit time: below ML baseline (72h min)

> Transshipment Detection

route: CN → MY → US (32-day interval)
✗ Exporter: BIS entity list match (CN)
✗ Country-of-origin discrepancy confirmed

enforcement.flag(manifest=”SHL-2024-09187″, typology=”transshipment”) → CBP
Sayari Graph – trade enforcement & transshipment detection

On this page

Get a demo

Se this live on your data

Request a Demo

HOW IT WORKS

From data to decision

01 – TARGET

Identify a company, individual, or shipment

Start from a known actor, an anomalous shipment, or a suspicious trade pattern identified by CBP or BIS.

02 – EXPAND

Full network traversal

Sayari maps ownership chains, co-directors, affiliated entities, and trade relationships across 250+ jurisdictions.

03 – REPORT

Export evidence for enforcement action

Full network visualization, source documents, and audit-ready entity reports exportable for referral or prosecution support.

450M+

Corporate entities in Sayari’s unified world model

Sayari’s world model integrates corporate registries, trade data, beneficial ownership filings, and sanctions databases into a single persistent entity graph – giving enforcement analysts access to relationships that no single source can provide.

Sayari Research · 2025

WHY SAYARI

Sayari vs Legacy tools

SAYARI

  • Network-first investigation – ownership traversal across 500M+ companies in 250+ jurisdictions
  • Trade-ownership linkage – Sayari Map connects manifest data to corporate ownership structures
  • Automated network mapping in minutes – not days of manual research
  • Unified world model – all jurisdictions normalized to a single entity resolution layer

LEGACY TOOLS

  • List screening only – misses novel, unlisted networks specifically designed to evade designation
  • No trade flow linkage – can’t connect corporate ownership to shipment-level activity
  • Manual research time of days or weeks to map a single network
  • Jurisdiction silos – data sources don’t connect across registries

CLIENT RESULTS

Measured outcomes from production deployments

SPEED

10×

Faster network mapping vs manual research across multiple database sources

SCALE

500M+

Corporate entities resolved in Sayari’s world model across 250+ jurisdictions

COVERAGE

3.8B+

Trade records linked to corporate ownership in Sayari Map

PRODUCTS FOR THIS USE CASE

Sayari products that power this workflow

Sayari Graph

Entity resolution and ownership graph for 500M+ companies across 250+ jurisdictions.

Explore Sayari Graph

Sayari Map

Trade-flow intelligence mapping shipment data to corporate ownership networks.

Explore Sayari Map

Sayari Signal

Continuous monitoring that alerts on meaningful changes across your counterparty base.

Explore Sayari Signal

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Common questions about this use case

What trade enforcement use cases does Sayari support for government agencies?
How does Sayari trace transshipment and country of origin fraud?
Can Sayari support inter-agency data sharing for trade enforcement?
What is Sayari’s coverage of trade data for enforcement purposes?

GET STARTED

See a full enforcement network mapped in minutes.

Request a demo to see Sayari Graph trace a trade enforcement target across jurisdictions.

Resources & Insights

Recommended Resources

Investigation Brief

Cross-Border Fentanyl and Methamphetamine Network

Tracing a sentenced CJNG chemical broker’s multi-million dollar import operation – revealing 700M+ methamphetamine doses and 3B+ f…
Read Brief
Investigation Brief

Identifying High-Risk Mexican Importers of Essential Chemicals

A methodology for analyzing trade patterns to identify entities at higher risk of chemical diversion for fentanyl and methamphetam…
Read Brief
Investigation Brief

Starlink Terminal Diversion to Sanctioned Jurisdictions

Starlink terminals illegally diverted to Russian military through transnational facilitation networks spanning the U.S., Germany, …
Read Brief