Sanctions Evasion Reference

Transshipment

Unloading goods from one conveyance and reloading them onto another en route, so that the shipment reaches its destination through an intermediate country.

reviewed

2026-08-20

Transshipment is ordinary logistics. Most container traffic passes through a hub port that is neither origin nor destination, and the practice exists because it is efficient.

It becomes a control problem when the intermediate stop is used to break the documentary chain: goods arrive under one description and leave under another, or arrive destined for a party in the hub and leave destined for somewhere the original exporter would not have shipped. Free trade zones, where customs formalities are suspended, concentrate that risk.

Where this term is used

  • What is dual-use re-export diversion? — Buying controlled civil-use goods lawfully in an open market and re-exporting them to a restricted end user, exploiting the fact that the item itself looks entirely ordinary.
  • What is cargo origin blending? — Mixing, decanting or re-documenting a commodity in transit so that restricted cargo is no longer traceable to its origin and arrives certified as coming from somewhere else.
  • What is third-country transshipment? — Routing restricted goods through an intermediate country so that the shipment reaching the restricted destination appears to originate somewhere the exporter would have supplied without question.

Related terms

  • Free trade zone — A designated area where goods may be landed, stored, handled and re-exported without the customs formalities that would apply in the domestic territory.
  • Re-export — The onward shipment of a controlled item from the country that first received it to a third country, which may itself require a licence from the original exporting state.
  • Certificate of origin — A document certifying the country in which goods were produced, used to determine tariff treatment and whether origin-based restrictions apply.

Sources

  1. Trade-Based Money Laundering: Trends and Developments. Financial Action Task Force and Egmont Group, 2020.
  2. Don't Let This Happen to You: Actual Investigations of Export Control and Antiboycott Violations. U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement, 2024.

All glossary terms