Adverse Media & Negative News Screening

Under Financial Action Task Force (FATF / GAFI) recommendations and statutory Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) regulations, adverse media screening is essential to detect illicit activities before formal convictions or judicial indictments appear on public registries.

Verifik's Adverse Media API performs real-time searches across indexed news articles, regulatory press releases, and investigative journalism reports via Google News RSS feeds, combining subject names with targeted legal and criminal typologies. The API extracts sentiment, filters false positives, deduplicates headlines, and computes a standardized AML Risk Score (0–100).

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Targeted Adverse Crime Typologies

The engine automatically expands queries with localized multi-language criminal taxonomy keywords:

• Financial & Corporate Crimes: Fraud (estafa), embezzlement (peculado), bribery (soborno), tax evasion (evasión fiscal), Ponzi schemes (captación ilegal).
• AML / CFT: Money laundering (lavado de activos), terrorism financing (financiación del terrorismo), shell companies (empresas de fachada).
• Public Corruption: Bid-rigging (cartelización), influence peddling (tráfico de influencias), illicit enrichment (enriquecimiento ilícito).
• Organized Crime & Penal: Drug trafficking (narcotráfico), extortion (extorsión), asset forfeiture (extinción de dominio), arrest warrants (orden de captura).

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API Reference

Endpoint

GET https://api.verifik.co/v2/co/media/adverse

Global multi-region news search route: GET https://api.verifik.co/v2/media/google-rss

Headers

Name	Value
Content-Type	application/json
Accept	application/json
Authorization	Bearer <token>

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
fullName	string	Conditional	Full name of the individual or registered commercial business name. Required if documentNumber is omitted.
documentNumber	string	Conditional	National ID (CC, NIT, CE). When supplied, the API automatically resolves the official name from national registries before querying.
documentType	string	No	Document type: CC (default), NIT, CE, PAS.
country	string	No	Regional jurisdiction filter: co (Colombia, default), mx (Mexico), us (United States), or global.
lang	string	No	Language of the media search: es (Spanish, default) or en (English).
limit	number	No	Maximum number of articles returned (default: 20, maximum: 50).

Use Cases

• Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD): Supplement standard watchlist checks for high-risk clients, PEPs, and corporate counterparties.
• Merchant & Executive Onboarding: Safeguard brand reputation by identifying controversies before formal partnerships or hires.
• Ongoing AML Monitoring: Periodically scan supplier bases for early-warning indicators of regulatory probes or criminal investigations.

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Request

Node.js / JavaScript

import axios from "axios";

const options = {
  method: "GET",
  url: "https://api.verifik.co/v2/co/media/adverse",
  params: {
    fullName: "PEDRO PABLO RAMIREZ GOMEZ",
    country: "co",
    lang: "es",
  },
  headers: {
    Accept: "application/json",
    Authorization: "Bearer <your_token>",
  },
};

try {
  const { data } = await axios.request(options);
  console.log(data);
} catch (error) {
  console.error(error.response ? error.response.data : error.message);
}

Python

import http.client
import urllib.parse
import json

conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection("api.verifik.co")
params = urllib.parse.urlencode({
    "fullName": "PEDRO PABLO RAMIREZ GOMEZ",
    "country": "co",
    "lang": "es"
})
headers = {
    "Accept": "application/json",
    "Authorization": "Bearer <your_token>"
}

conn.request("GET", f"/v2/co/media/adverse?{params}", headers=headers)
res = conn.getresponse()
data = res.read()

print(json.loads(data.decode("utf-8")))

cURL

curl -X GET "https://api.verifik.co/v2/co/media/adverse?fullName=PEDRO%20PABLO%20RAMIREZ%20GOMEZ&country=co&lang=es" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <your_token>"

---

Response

200 (Adverse Media Detected - High Risk)

{
  "data": {
    "fullName": "PEDRO PABLO RAMIREZ GOMEZ",
    "hasAdverseMedia": true,
    "riskScore": 85,
    "riskLevel": "HIGH",
    "totalArticles": 2,
    "matchedKeywords": [
      "captura",
      "fiscalia",
      "lavado de activos",
      "extincion de dominio"
    ],
    "articles": [
      {
        "title": "Fiscalía ocupó bienes por presunto lavado de activos en Bogotá",
        "url": "https://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/investigacion-lavado-activos-bogota-2025",
        "sourceName": "El Tiempo",
        "publishedAt": "2025-08-14T14:32:00.000Z",
        "snippet": "En operativo conjunto con la Policía Judicial, fue ordenada la captura de presuntos implicados vinculados a operaciones comerciales irregulares...",
        "matchedKeywords": ["fiscalia", "captura", "lavado de activos"],
        "severity": "HIGH"
      },
      {
        "title": "Medida cautelar sobre activos societarios en investigación financiera",
        "url": "https://www.elespectador.com/judicial/medida-cautelar-sociedades-2025",
        "sourceName": "El Espectador",
        "publishedAt": "2025-06-20T09:15:00.000Z",
        "snippet": "Sociedades vinculadas entraron a proceso de extinción de dominio por solicitud de autoridades judiciales...",
        "matchedKeywords": ["extincion de dominio"],
        "severity": "MEDIUM"
      }
    ]
  },
  "signature": {
    "dateTime": "2026-10-30 20:30:00",
    "message": "Certified by Verifik.co"
  }
}

200 (Clean / No Adverse Media)

{
  "data": {
    "fullName": "MARIA FERNANDA ROJAS",
    "hasAdverseMedia": false,
    "riskScore": 0,
    "riskLevel": "LOW",
    "totalArticles": 0,
    "matchedKeywords": [],
    "articles": []
  },
  "signature": {
    "dateTime": "2026-10-30 20:30:00",
    "message": "Certified by Verifik.co"
  }
}

409 (Missing Query Parameters)

{
  "code": "MissingParameter",
  "message": "Either fullName or documentNumber must be provided"
}

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Sandbox Probes

Test deterministic risk profiles in sandbox mode:

Input Query	Country	Expected Result
PEDRO PABLO RAMIREZ GOMEZ / 75086330	co	High AML Risk profile (hasAdverseMedia: true, riskScore: 85, riskLevel: "HIGH").
MARIA FERNANDA ROJAS / 12345678	co	Clean record (hasAdverseMedia: false, riskScore: 0, riskLevel: "LOW").