Enforcement actions
ExChek aggregates recent U.S. export-control enforcement from public government sources, normalizes every action to one record shape, and serves the result newest first — over REST (GET /api/enforcement) and MCP (get_enforcement_actions). Use it to answer “who has been penalized?”, check whether a counterparty has an enforcement history, or gauge enforcement trends for a control regime.
Sources
| Source | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Federal Register | BIS denial and settlement orders plus DDTC ITAR notices (denial orders, debarments, civil penalties). |
| DOJ National Security Division | Criminal export-control and sanctions cases, from DOJ press releases. |
| BIS charging letters | The charging-letter docket published at bis.gov. |
| DDTC civil consent agreements | The DDTC penalties & oversight agreements portal, refreshed weekly. |
Everything is public information only — no CUI, no classified material — and every source fails soft: a slow or broken upstream contributes nothing to the response rather than failing the request.
The normalized record
Every action, regardless of source, carries the same fields:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
id | Stable source-prefixed identifier (e.g. fr:2025-01234). |
agency | BIS, DDTC, or DOJ. |
action_type | Normalized type: denial_order, temporary_denial, settlement, charging_letter, criminal, consent_agreement, debarment, … |
party | The named party, where the source states one. |
title | The action’s title as published. |
date | Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD). |
statutes | Cited statutes/authorities extracted from the text (e.g. IEEPA, ECRA, 15 CFR, 22 CFR). |
source_url | The human-readable page for the action. |
doc_url | The underlying document (PDF), where one exists. |
Filters
All filters are optional and combine: agency (BIS | DDTC | DOJ), action_type (exact match), party (case-insensitive substring), statute (case-insensitive substring on cited authorities), since (YYYY-MM-DD), and limit (default 25, max 100).
REST example
curl -sS "https://api.exchek.us/api/enforcement?agency=BIS&limit=5"Returns { actions, count, sources } — the normalized records plus the list of sources consulted for the query.
MCP example
curl -sS -X POST https://api.exchek.us/mcp \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"get_enforcement_actions","arguments":{"agency":"BIS","limit":5}}}'Free vs. Enterprise
The read feed — GET /api/enforcement and the get_enforcement_actions MCP tool — is free, no auth. check_party_enforcement is an Enterprise MCP tool: it screens a named counterparty across every source above plus the trade.gov Denied Persons List and returns the matching actions grouped by source with a short summary. See Pricing for plans.