I made an account just to say as a frustrated person on a job search right now with pretty good qualifications what you are doing is silly.

BOTH of your examples are things that in no way whatsoever make you liable legally and you have no reason not to tell the candidate in either situation. You could literally tell the candidate even vaguely that there might be issues that will take awhile to clear up before the company can make a hiring decision. You can vaguely say that these are based on internal business processes that you aren't at liberty to explain.

Please TELL the candidate that they did well and you would hire them and might be interested in hiring them in the future if not for 'vague thing that lets the candidate know it is the company and not you'. This is incredibly frustrating and there is no reason for lying about it.