Trade-compliance recordkeeping program

Description

Trade-compliance recordkeeping is the documentation discipline that turns each export decision into an audit-ready file, and is where most export-control investigations either get closed quickly or expand. The substantive rules vary by regime: the US EAR requires retention of export-transaction records, classifications, license applications, and screening hits for five years from the date of the underlying transaction; ITAR carries the same five-year window with stricter content rules for defense-article exports; the EU Dual-Use Regulation 2021/821 carries a three-year retention floor with member-state implementations that often extend it. The records that have to be retained are not just the transactional artifacts (purchase orders, shipping documents, end-user statements) but also the decision-making artifacts (the classification rationale, the license-determination output, the catch-all screening result, the license-exception conditions where one was claimed). The operational shape: a records system keyed to the export transaction with each decision-making artifact attached, a retention policy that handles the longer of the applicable regimes, and a litigation-hold workflow that tolls retention destruction when an investigation is opened. The piece that consistently goes wrong is the classification rationale, which is often held in an analyst's email rather than in the records system, and is the artifact most likely to be requested first when a regulator opens a file.

Required by (5 regulations)

• US EAR

  15 CFR §762.6 — 5-year retention of license applications, classification documentation, end-use statements, restricted-party screening results.

  15 CFR §762.6

• US OFAC

  31 CFR §501.601 — 5-year retention of every transaction subject to OFAC's regulations, including screening evidence (list version, hit/miss, beneficial-ownership data).

  31 CFR §501.601

• EU Dual-Use

  Regulation (EU) 2021/821, Article 27 — 5-year retention floor; Member State extensions (France: 10 years for some records).

  Regulation (EU) 2021/821, Article 27

• UK Export Control

  Export Control Order 2008 Article 28 — 3-year base + per-licence terms; OGEL Cryptographic Development requires retention for OGEL duration + 3 years.

  Export Control Order 2008 Article 28

• Other Sanctions

  Per-jurisdiction recordkeeping (AU 5 years; CA 5+ years; JP 7 years FEFTA-related records; SG MAS Notice TFS-related; CH SECO 5 years base).

  Per-jurisdiction recordkeeping (AU 5 years; CA 5+ years; JP 7 years FEFTA-relate

Fulfilled by (1)

• In-house build · medium effort

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• record-retention policy
• audit log