Sanctions Evasion Reference

Suspicious activity report

A confidential report filed by a regulated firm with its national financial intelligence unit when it knows or suspects that activity may involve criminal proceeds or sanctioned parties.

also known as

SAR, STR, suspicious transaction report

reviewed

2026-08-20

Reports are filed to the FIU, not to the police, and filing does not accuse anyone. The system depends on volume and on the FIU’s ability to link a report to others it holds.

Reports are not public and are not sources for this site. They matter to the account here because they are frequently the origin of an investigation that later surfaces as an indictment or a penalty notice, which is where the public record of a technique usually begins.

Where this term is used

  • How is correspondent banking used to evade sanctions? — Using a chain of banks that each know only their own customer, so that a payment for a restricted party reaches a currency it could not access directly, without any bank in the chain seeing the whole transaction.
  • What is a professional enabler? — A lawyer, accountant, formation agent or broker whose services are what makes a concealment structure work, and whose repeated involvement across unconnected clients is itself the evidence.
  • What are third-country bank accounts and how are they used? — Holding accounts in a jurisdiction unconnected to the restricted party, the goods or the contract, so that payments reach and leave the restricted economy without ever appearing to touch it.

Related terms

  • Financial intelligence unit — The national agency that receives suspicious activity reports, analyses them, and disseminates intelligence to law enforcement and to counterpart units abroad.
  • Customer due diligence — The ongoing process of understanding a customer's identity, ownership, expected activity and risk, and checking that actual activity remains consistent with it.
  • Red-flag indicator — A published, attributable observation that a transaction or relationship warrants further enquiry, drawn from patterns seen in past cases.

Sources

  1. The FATF Recommendations. Financial Action Task Force, 2025.
  2. Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units. Egmont Group, 2026.

All glossary terms