Much of the data is indeed public. LSEG have analysts going around all the websites of major government entities publishing sanctions lists to update their database. If you’re politically exposed or get mentioned in the media for being convicted of fraud and it’s public knowledge, it’ll gets pulled in too.

LSEG get sued by people all the time, so they document and justify everything that goes into the file. There are very good legal reasons to do so.

Because the people in question aren't necessarily criminals. You should be careful of how easily that you may be hypnotized by language, including but not exclusive to accusations.

PEPs — Politically Exposed Persons, like family of politicians. Businesses with KYC screening requirements beyond sanctions and criminal convictions might care about it, because they fear bad media coverage, for examples

I think there are a lot of non-criminals who would LOVE to know they are on the list.

As I said in another comment: they respond to GDPR requests.

I found out I’m on their list, as have a few other friends.

> Making them public would lead both to greater accuracy and their more widespread use keeps criminals out of the financial systems.

What about arresting criminals for their actual crimes instead of having a gigantic, worldwide, army of bureaucrats inventing sick and sicker KYC/AML rules which do nothing but cost business and honest people time and money?

Estimated worldwide KYC/AML compliance costs: $180bn. For absolutely nothing: nothing of value is produced. Pure Brazil (the movie) style redtape pointless documents, processes, code, etc. To freeze (not seize: just freeze, some of it shall be unfrozen after more pointless public servants shall waste time producing nothing of value)... $12 bn. 15x less than the estimated cost.

That's totalitarism for you: pure insanity created by sick minds and admired by sicker minds.

That is because money can cross lines on political maps but police jurisdictions often do not.

Also, criminals can hide, but bank accounts are always maintained at the bank.

You know the value of measures like this is not just the money frozen but also the prevented crime which is not even attempted because people know about the measures, right? That’s like saying surveillance cameras are useless because they don’t catch thieves. Sure, but maybe they decrease theft anyways…

This is a list made up of other lists, and some of those lists, like sanctions lists, are public.

e.g.: https://ofac.treasury.gov/specially-designated-nationals-and...

> their more widespread use keeps criminals out of the financial systems.

Governments already have solved this by requiring banks to use lists like these (or similar subsets of these) where desired.

As I understand, in the finance world lists like this are considered classified because knowing you're on one, or the circumstances that put you on one could help you/others circumvent the measures. Fraud detection works like this - if you're under investigation, you won't know about it, you'll have some vague issue with your bank account.

This is where the article is insufficiently clear. Lists of people who are under investigation for fraud is definitely something banks keep quiet, for the reason you mentioned. But as a sibling comment says, sanctions lists are public, as are records of people convicted of relevant crimes in most (all?) jusrisdictions. So what kind of lists are these? Because the article's line about "individuals who were sanctioned as recently as this year" is hardly exciting - the UK sanctions list has people sanctioned today, 18 April.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-sanctions-...

These are hundreds of lists from all over the world updated a few times a day. They are very diverse ranging from known terrorist fronts to things as benign as a locally elected politician. Assuming everyone mentioned in the DB was somehow involved in fraud or criminal activity would be a gross misrepresentation. Financial institutions and other businesses use them in KYC/AML, but also for flagging accounts that might need some white glove /red carpet treatment as mistakes made on those could lead to bad press.

Fairly sure that anything super sensitive like that won’t make it into the World-Check datafile. The records in there are mostly already public information if you know where to look

This is private commercial data distributed under license. It isn't classified as Secret by the UK or US government.

Worldcheck is an aggregator of lists for political sensitive persons and anti money laundering. Many of the lists they aggregate are public.

I'm not seeing a problem with them going public either. The article even states that there are innocent people on the list. It would be nice to know so they can contest and clear their data off the list.

> It would be nice to know so they can contest and clear their data off the list.

That can be done here:

https://www.lseg.com/en/risk-intelligence/screening-solution...

Only if you know you're on it and why though, right?

That's the case whether or not it's public.

Why is the identity of a wrongly accused person, formerly kept private, your business?

This is true, but it's not exactly private. In this case it is circulated widely among banks. I'd happily accept another method for private people to know they are on a private list.

LSEG is a data vendor. They don't want to make their data public because they charge for it. Much of the original raw data that they aggregate is already public.

They’re charging for the effort of collecting and curating it all.

And that is indeed a service worth paying for. LSEG data set has decent coverage for businesses outside US and Europe, and they are one of the few who offer fairly reliable UBO ("universal beneficial owner") data on top.

They're not cheap, but comparing to the cost of spending double-digit number of hours trying to find the same information in house - you are quite likely to come out ahead.

For those wondering, UBO research is not unlike investigative journalism.