An AI tool isn’t a piece of software. It’s a locked door, and you have no idea how many people have a key. Quick preview ahead of tomorrow’s webinar on AI and third-party risk, because I want you thinking about this before we dive in. Here’s the mental shift every compliance officer needs to make: every AI tool your company adopts is a third-party vendor...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov rounds up three major economic policy developments happening alongside Operation Economic Outcast: the State Department’s rescission of Syria’s nearly 47-year State Sponsor of Terrorism designation, opening the door to renewed trade and eased export controls; an escalating tariff war with Canada following the collapse of USMCA renewal talks, including a 50 percent tariff on roughly...
Operation Economic Outcast has rightly drawn the most attention this month, and we’ve given it the two-part deep dive it deserves. But it wasn’t the only major economic-policy development in the same 30-day window. Three other stories are worth a quick roundup, because together they show just how many directions U.S. economic policy is pulling in at once right now: Syria, pursuing more sanctions relief...
Part 1 of this deep dive covered the two developments inside Operation Economic Outcast that hit compliance functions first: the sectoral expansion of Executive Order 13902 into aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology, and the sweeping suspension of general licenses that had authorized narrow, often noncommercial Iran-related activity. Part 2 turns to the other half of the campaign, and arguably the part that shows...
Treasury’s Operation Economic Outcast is the most consequential sanctions development of the year, and it deserves more than a passing mention in a broader roundup. This is Part 1 of a focused, two-part deep dive on the campaign. Here, we cover the two pieces of Operation Economic Outcast that create the most immediate, concrete compliance obligations: the expansion of Iran sectoral sanctions to five new...
An AI tool isn’t a piece of software. It’s a locked door, and you have no idea how many people have a key. Quick preview ahead of tomorrow’s webinar on AI and third-party risk, because I want you thinking about this before we dive in. Here’s the mental shift every compliance officer needs to make: every AI tool your company adopts is a third-party vendor...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov rounds up three major economic policy developments happening alongside Operation Economic Outcast: the State Department’s rescission of Syria’s nearly 47-year State Sponsor of Terrorism designation, opening the door to renewed trade and eased export controls; an escalating tariff war with Canada following the collapse of USMCA renewal talks, including a 50 percent tariff on roughly...
Operation Economic Outcast has rightly drawn the most attention this month, and we’ve given it the two-part deep dive it deserves. But it wasn’t the only major economic-policy development in the same 30-day window. Three other stories are worth a quick roundup, because together they show just how many directions U.S. economic policy is pulling in at once right now: Syria, pursuing more sanctions relief...
Part 1 of this deep dive covered the two developments inside Operation Economic Outcast that hit compliance functions first: the sectoral expansion of Executive Order 13902 into aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology, and the sweeping suspension of general licenses that had authorized narrow, often noncommercial Iran-related activity. Part 2 turns to the other half of the campaign, and arguably the part that shows...
Treasury’s Operation Economic Outcast is the most consequential sanctions development of the year, and it deserves more than a passing mention in a broader roundup. This is Part 1 of a focused, two-part deep dive on the campaign. Here, we cover the two pieces of Operation Economic Outcast that create the most immediate, concrete compliance obligations: the expansion of Iran sectoral sanctions to five new...
For anyone hoping a friendlier DOJ can make their old charges disappear, a federal judge just reminded us that vanishing requires his or her permission. Big development out of Brooklyn federal court. DOJ tried to drop the remaining bribery and obstruction charges against executives tied to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani. The judge said no. Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that Deputy AG Trent McCotter’s justification for...
Deloitte UK just published a workforce survey on generative AI use that every compliance officer should read carefully, because it puts real numbers behind something many of us have suspected for a while: employees aren’t waiting for their employer’s blessing before they start using AI tools at work. Nearly a third of generative AI users bring their own tools into the workplace and use them...
In this episode of Corruption, Crime and Compliance, Michael Volkov devotes a full deep dive to Operation Economic Outcast, Treasury’s aggressive campaign to close off Iran’s remaining financial and commercial channels following the collapse of a June 2026 US-Iran memorandum of understanding. He walks through OFAC’s expansion of sectoral sanctions into aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology with no U.S. nexus required, the suspension...
DOJ announced two significant executive sentencings within a day of each other this week, and while the underlying conduct is different, a bank CEO’s fraud and sanctions evasion scheme versus an oil trader’s foreign bribery scheme, both cases carry the same underlying message for compliance officers: individual accountability for executive-level misconduct remains a live, active DOJ priority, and prison sentences in the range of four...
If you’re planning for 2027 with 2025’s budget in mind, your compliance program is about to fall on its face. KPMG just surveyed 725 chief compliance officers, and the headline is simple: the job has fundamentally expanded, and if your 2027 plan doesn’t reflect that, you’re already behind. 75% of CCOs say cybersecurity and data privacy are top investment priorities. 77% say the same about...
