There is no public, machine-readable registry of licensed customs brokers and freight forwarders. This is not a minor administrative gap. It is a structural vulnerability in the global trade system that enables fraud, facilitates sanctions evasion, and creates liability for every importer who uses an unverified intermediary.
The Freight Forwarder Verification Gap: 2,849 Brokers, No Public Registry, No Verification Standard
By Anthony James Peacock — Founder, Trade Compliance Records | May 24, 2026
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There is no public, machine-readable registry of licensed customs brokers and freight forwarders. This is not a minor administrative gap. It is a structural vulnerability in the global trade system that enables fraud, facilitates sanctions evasion, and creates liability for every importer who uses an unverified intermediary.
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The Scale of the Problem
There are approximately 45,000 licensed customs brokers in the United States, 12,000 in the European Union, 8,000 in the United Kingdom, 6,000 in South Africa, and 4,000 in Australia. Globally, there are an estimated 150,000–200,000 licensed customs brokers and freight forwarders.
Of these, a significant proportion are: Operating with expired licences Operating under revoked licences that have not been publicly reported Operating as unlicensed intermediaries using the licence of a related entity Operating as shell companies that front for sanctioned entities
The problem is that there is no way for an importer to verify any of these facts without contacting the relevant licensing authority directly — a process that can take days and that most importers do not perform.
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The Liability Exposure
Under US customs law, the importer of record is responsible for the accuracy of the customs declaration regardless of whether a licensed customs broker prepared it. If a customs broker makes an error on a declaration — whether through negligence, incompetence, or fraud — the importer bears the liability.
More significantly, under the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions programme, an importer can be held liable for sanctions violations committed by their freight forwarder — even if the importer had no knowledge of the violation. OFAC's "strict liability" standard means that knowledge is not required for liability to attach.
In 2024, OFAC assessed $1.2 billion in civil penalties against US companies for sanctions violations committed by their freight forwarders and customs brokers. The majority of these violations involved freight forwarders routing shipments through sanctioned jurisdictions without the importer's knowledge.
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The TCR Logistics Directory Solution
TCR's Logistics Directory addresses the freight forwarder verification gap by creating a machine-readable registry of verified customs brokers and freight forwarders across 20 countries. Each entry in the directory includes:
Licence verification: The broker's licence number, issuing authority, and expiry date, verified against the relevant licensing authority's records Sanctions screening: The broker's identity screened against OFAC, EU, UN, and UK sanctions lists AEO/C-TPAT status: The broker's Authorised Economic Operator or Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism status, where applicable TCR verification record: A SHA-256...