Acquitted, but still flagged: how we cleared a company and three of its directors from the world's main screening databases
Strongroom Intelligence
Communication Department
An acquittal should close the matter. For one of our clients, an industrial company, and three of its directors, it didn't.
In early 2026, a European court fully acquitted all four in criminal proceedings. Yet the allegations remained in the risk-intelligence databases that banks and corporates consult for KYC and AML screening. Every check on their names still suggested investigations and indictments that a court had already rejected.
The consequences were concrete: difficult banking relationships, delayed onboarding and lasting reputational damage, all based on records that no longer reflected the legal reality.
What we did
In May 2026, our legal and intelligence team submitted removal requests to three of the principal screening database operators, on behalf of the company and each director.
For the three directors, we relied on the GDPR: the right to erasure (Article 17), the accuracy principle (Article 5), the strict rules on criminal-offence data (Article 10) and the right to object (Article 21).
For the company, the GDPR does not apply, as it protects only natural persons. We built the case on commercial-reputation and unfair-competition law instead.
Our core argument was simple: information based on allegations a court has rejected cannot be made accurate by adding a note saying "acquitted". It can only be removed.
Why it was hard
Two operators acted within weeks. The first removed all profiles and issued nil-search certificates; the second confirmed that none of the four subjects appeared in its compliance-screening database.
The third took five months of formal correspondence. It first offered only to annotate the records as "acquitted", leaving earlier investigation-stage entries in place. It then refused erasure. Finally, it asked for further documentation, arguing that different acquittal formulas in the judgment might leave some allegations standing.
At each stage, we answered point by point. We showed that the judgment it already had was sufficient, and that under the applicable criminal procedure both formulas are full acquittals that extinguish the allegations. We held firm on full erasure rather than partial fixes.
In the end, the operator decided without the additional documentation it had requested: the judgment it already held was enough.
The result
In October 2026, the operator reversed its position and removed every event linked to the proceedings. Across all three databases, the result is now the same: a bank or company screening any of the four names no longer sees the adverse content that was there when we started.
Why it matters
Screening databases are powerful tools, but they are not always right. As a RegTech company, Strongroom Intelligence works on both sides of compliance: we help institutions screen effectively, and we help individuals and companies correct the record when the data is wrong.
Facing a similar situation? Our team can assess your case. Contact us at info@strongroom-intel.com