NewsroomRegulation

Your suppliers are your responsibility, and a trade licence PDF is not diligence

When a supplier turns out to be sanctioned, unlicensed or hiding who controls it, we did not know is not a defence. The expectation now runs in both directions: the same diligence on the companies you buy from as on the customers you sell to.

· 2 MIN READ · BY THE KYCK DESK

What the usual supplier file proves

Most procurement teams verify a supplier with a trade licence PDF and a bank letter. That proves the paperwork exists. It does not prove the business is still licensed, who owns it, or whether the people behind it are sanctioned.

Four questions a supplier file has to answer

  • Is the business real and licensed right now, verified against official corporate registries rather than a document sent by email?
  • Who actually owns and controls it, mapped through every layer of holdings and nominees?
  • Are the people behind it sanctioned, politically exposed or in adverse media?
  • Is the file current, or is it a snapshot from the day the supplier was approved?

Why the last question is the one that bites

Supplier risk is not static. A supplier who is clean at onboarding can be designated, lose a licence or change hands six months later, and nothing in a procurement folder will tell you. Continuous monitoring exists precisely because the approval date and the risk date are never the same day.

In the UAE this stopped being good practice and became a tax question: from 1 October 2026 the Federal Tax Authority can deny input VAT on supplies connected to evasion where the buyer should have known. Our explainer on FTA Decision No. 13 sets out what that requires.

KYCK runs supplier verification end to end: the documents collected through a link, the entity and its owners screened, and every check dated. See counterparty onboarding.

Sources

Related reading

FTA Decision 13 explainedCounterparty onboardingCorporate service providers

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