The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced new positions in its National Security Division to support the agency’s crackdown on sanctions evasion, export control violations, and other forms of economic crime.
Ian Richardson was named the division’s first chief counsel for corporate enforcement, said the DOJ in a press release Monday. Previously, Richardson served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
The DOJ also appointed Christian Nauvel as deputy chief counsel for corporate enforcement. Nauvel most recently served as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division.
The creation of the new chief counsel for corporate enforcement position was first teased in March by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco as part of a wide-ranging speech on white-collar crime. Within those remarks, she said the agency would be adding 25 new prosecutors to enhance its national security enforcement efforts.
“[T]hese actions demonstrate the breadth of the department’s commitment to combating corporate crime, particularly where it places our collective security at risk,” she said. “As the National Security Division expands its capacity to investigate and prosecute corporate sanctions violations, they will work closely with U.S. attorneys’ offices and the Criminal Division to apply enforcement strategies that have proven their worth in other areas of the department.”
Monaco has notably referred to sanctions as “the new FCPA,” putting the DOJ’s focus in the area on par with its enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The agency has increased collaboration with regulators including the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security and Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control regarding company use of third-party intermediaries to help circumvent sanctions and export controls against Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Last week, the DOJ announced a criminal resolution involving a Greek-based shipping company’s transport of nearly 1 million barrels of contraband crude oil from another sanctioned country in Iran. Empire Navigation pleaded guilty in the case and was sentenced to pay nearly $2.5 million.
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