Richard Burke

Richard has over 30 years of experience advising on compliance matters and resolving enforcement issues for clients arising from US international trade controls. Richard obtained a joint degree from Georgetown University in law and international relations. This has made him uniquely qualified to navigate the legal and policy aspects of trade controls. The United States and other nations increasingly use international trade controls, including economic sanctions and export controls, as an instrument of foreign policy to attempt to alter conduct of other nations or persons that they find objectionable. Richard’s expertise encompasses the economic sanctions regulations administered by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) administered by the US Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”), and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”) administered by the State Department Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”). Representation of clients in this area requires command of both the extremely technical economic sanctions and export control legal rules, as well as the policy motivations and objectives that determine how those controls will be applied in practice, under what circumstances the relevant authority may exercise its discretion in the application of the controls, when exceptions or licenses may be granted, and when sanctions or export controls may be lifted. Richard’s command of both the law and policy considerations has allowed him to place clients in the best possible compliance positions, to design client specific compliance programs, to effectively interpret and apply often ambiguous rules in a practical manner, to obtain licenses when necessary, to unblock frozen funds when they were blocked on faulty grounds, and to work with relevant authorities such as OFAC to remove parties from sanctions lists or in some instances, add them to sanctions lists. 

Over his career, Richard has seen in real time the introduction of multiple US economic sanctions and export controls programs, their development into law/regulation, the practical application of the rules and guidance, and in some cases the removal of programs and the expansion of others. These dynamics consistently have been the result of different policy priorities from different US Administrations. US sanctions against Cuba, for example, have persisted since the 1960’s, subject to adjustments on the margins; the US sanctions on Iran expanded consistently from the mid-1990s, with the exception of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”) or nuclear accord until the US withdrawal from the JCPOA; comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and Libya were imposed and subsequently removed; most recently, the US has imposed unprecedented sanctions and export controls measures against Russia, first in 2014 and then in 2022, unprecedented compared to other programs given Russia’s significance in global commerce and finance. Richard has worked on these developments as they occurred and communicated with regulators responsible for administering them to ensure the best outcomes for clients.