Crypto News: Bw Reads: Sanctioned parties’ go-to lawyer

Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Today Timothy McLaughlin profiles Erich Ferrari, a Washington lawyer who targeted parties — from Iran to Russia to Venezuela — turn to when they want to get off the Treasury Department’s sanctions list. You can find the whole story online here (free). You can also listen to it here.

If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here.

In the spring of 2022, an executive at one of Russia’s largest banks learned from a US Department of the Treasury press release that life was about to get exceedingly difficult. In response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government was imposing yet another round of sanctions on Russia, hoping to cripple its economy and starve its war machine of funds. The latest tranche cited the banking executive and dozens of others from the financial industry, in addition to three state-run TV stations and a rifle manufacturer.

The US had already sanctioned the bank itself, but the executive was nevertheless stunned to be on the list. The person wasn’t politically connected or particularly wealthy, didn’t do work connected to the military and had recently moved to quit. Unsure what to do, the executive (who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions from Russian authorities) asked a colleague for help and got some advice that’s been dispensed countless times around the world, to corporate executives and narco-traffickers alike:

Get in touch with Erich Ferrari.

The executive soon sent an email to the offices of Ferrari & Associates, a law firm in Washington, DC, that specializes in helping people and companies get removed from the US sanctions list. From his patch of prime real estate in a repurposed Gilded Age bank building, Ferrari can look across 15th Street at his primary adversary, the Treasury Department. If he peers a bit farther down the road, he can see the Freedman’s Bank Building, where Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) plans and deploys economic and trade sanctions after they’ve been established by legislation or an executive order.

He recalls one former employee, who’d crossed over from the other side of 15th Street, saying they imagined while in government that Ferrari was “on yachts with one of these warlords all the time.” Ferrari replied, “Dude, I’m a lawyer. What do lawyers do? We sit in front of a computer and write things and do research.”

Ferrari’s office in Washington. Photographer: Greg Kahn for Bloomberg Businessweek — Ferrari’s office in Washington.

He’s had plenty to write about since setting up shop in 2009. America’s use of sanctions has created a multibillion-dollar industry aimed at either avoiding being hit by them or, if that fails, getting out from under them. Small battalions of compliance officers and in-house lawyers help international companies navigate the web of potential violations. Boutique firms staffed by former Treasury officials offer quiet guidance to sanctioned individuals and companies, while lobbyists touting connections to the Trump administration pitch them on surefire relief. Abroad, due diligence teams scour company records and even family trees looking for possible compliance issues.

Ferrari arrived early to the field, before it was really much of a field at all, and he’s benefited immensely from Washington’s bipartisan love of sanctions. Each new round following a global calamity produces a fresh crop of opportunities. Last year the Treasury Department added 1,764 individuals and entities to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list, according to the Center for a New American Security. There are now sanctions conferences and sanctions industry professional organizations that dole out annual sanctions awards. Guests on sanctions podcasts riff on policy minutiae. Last year a book detailing the history of sanctions landed on the New York Times bestseller list.

By Ferrari’s count, his firm has gotten more than 100 individuals and entities delisted. Clients who’ve been removed from the sanctions roster in recent years include Fadi Serhan, a Lebanese businessman whose Beirut-based electronics store sold equipment to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV; Ilya Brodskiy and Alexey Panferov, both sanctioned for holding top positions at Russia’s Sovcombank; and Angel Rondón Rijo, a dealmaker in the Dominican Republic who was sanctioned during Donald Trump’s first term for alleged connections to a corrupt Brazilian construction firm. (The Dominican Republic Supreme Court acquitted Rondón in 2024.)

Some in the sanctions industry keep a low profile to avoid the reputational tarnish that can come with assisting alleged enemies of the state. Not Ferrari. He’s a regular on the podcast and panel circuit, delivering his points in a reserved baritone with a technical focus that tends to steer around the more charged aspects of sanctions. His measured cadence belies a legal approach that other attorneys say can at times be aggressive and abrasive. Ferrari has helped to popularize the tactic of suing OFAC. He’s taken the office to court more than 50 times, boasting on a recent podcast appearance that he’s the most litigious attorney in “the history of US economic sanctions.”

His critics charge that he’s helping people dodge punishment for actions that have included carrying out or abetting killings, torture and war crimes. Ferrari counters that his work is a necessary check on government power and ensures the proper functioning of sanctions regimes. He also cites his firm belief that even those accused of heinous crimes are entitled to a lawyer. “Someone says I’m taking blood money and I’m facilitating the genocide of an ethnic group,” he says. “I guess, if that’s your perspective. But at the same time, we do have a legal tradition in this country.”

The second Trump administration has pursued a foreign policy agenda that’s been described as “transactional,” among other, more critical, adjectives. Trump has belittled friends, threatened allies and generally flouted diplomatic conventions in favor of an approach of chummy dealmaking by a few close associates. After going to war in Iran, his administration loosened some sanctions on Russian and Iranian oil exports, only to retighten the latter. Elsewhere, Trump has piled ever more sanctions on Cuba and eased ones on Venezuela and Syria.

Lobbyists and influence peddlers of all stripes have found lucrative opportunities rafting this unpredictable, monied churn on behalf of sanctioned individuals, but that’s not Ferrari. He focuses on the formal delisting process, where opportunities still abound. “It’s 100% a growth industry,” he says.

Keep reading

On the Podcast

This week on the Everybody’s Business podcast from Bloomberg Businessweek, Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman joins hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith to break down her latest scoop: Direct-to-consumer pioneer Everlane has been acquired by fast-fashion giant Shein for $100 million. What does an opaque e-commerce behemoth want with a brand that built its name on “radical transparency”? Lauren unpacks the corporate irony and offers sanity-saving shopping advice.

Plus, Businessweek contributing writer Megan Greenwell drops by to discuss the roaring success of the WNBA. Fresh off a historic collective bargaining agreement engineered with the help of a Nobel Prize-winning Harvard economist, the league has experienced growth that seems limitless — even if skyrocketing ticket prices are giving Day 1 fans a bit of sticker shock.

Listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal.