sanction.control label splits ownership from adjacency in sanctions data
OpenSanctions has introduced a new annotation label, sanction.control, to separate ownership links from adjacency when mapping sanctions-related entities.
Source: OpenSanctions · August 14, 2026 at 4:08 AM · AI-assisted report
Single-source
KUALA LUMPUR, 14 AUGUST 2026 —
OpenSanctions has introduced a new annotation label, sanction.control, to separate ownership links from adjacency when mapping sanctions-related entities.
Market Impact
The label now flags subsidiaries, assets and vessels owned by a sanctioned party, even if the ownership is indirect through multiple layers. sanction.linked will cover only entities directly adjacent to a sanctioned person or company, such as employers, directors, spouses or subsidiaries several layers below.
Ukraine designated Eugeny Giner in October 2022 as president of CSKA Moscow since 2001 and alleged representative of the former Luzhniki criminal group. Kyiv has since expanded sanctions against Giner and his associates. In May 2026, measures were extended to three more people tied to a financial-industrial group he co-founded, including his son Vadim.
In November 2023, a company called Yakhonty Kursk was registered in Kursk. The Russian company register shows a hotel-management firm outside Moscow as a major shareholder. That firm is half-owned by Giner. Yakhonty Kursk itself is not on any sanctions list, but the ownership chain now places it under sanction.control. Without the new label, the link would have been ambiguous under sanction.linked.
Many sanctions regimes treat the property of a designated party as designated regardless of whether the name appears on a screening list. OFAC’s 50-Percent Rule is a well-known example: if a sanctioned entity owns more than 50% of another entity, the second entity is also considered designated. OpenSanctions now records ownership chains explicitly, enabling users to identify when an entity falls under such rules without applying a fixed threshold.
sanction.control simply records that a relationship exists. Previously, sanction.linked covered a wide range of relationships, from a sanctioned person’s employer to a director of a subsidiary several layers down. The new taxonomy clarifies that sanction.linked will only include direct connections such as directors, owners or spouses, while sanction.control captures the ownership side of the chain.
The change is illustrated by the Russian Table Tennis Federation. Alexander Babakov, another alleged member of the former Luzhniki criminal group, has served as president since 2015. Babakov’s direct role will be marked under sanction.linked, while any companies or assets he controls through ownership will be flagged as sanction.control.
OpenSanctions also records Giner’s 50% stake in Agroinnovatsiya, a Moscow wholesale business set up in 2019. Agroinnovatsiya owns a trading house of the same name and further companies in Astrakhan and the Moscow region. None of these entities appear on any sanctions list, but they are now captured under sanction.control. The new annotation notes that an end date on a shareholding terminates the chain, so holdings that have been sold are no longer flagged.
The platform remains a freely available, open-data resource under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution Non-Commercial licence and will continue to issue monthly updates.