Akin Gump’s International Trade Team, Lawyers Recognized by WorldECR

(Washington, D.C.) – Akin Gump has been honored by WorldECR magazine in several categories of this year’s WorldECR Awards.

International trade partner Kevin Wolf was selected as Export Controls Practitioner of the Year. A former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, Mr. Wolf was cited as being “the central strategist, negotiator and implementer of [former] President Obama’s Export Control Reform Initiative.” WorldECR observed that “few have been untouched by the overhaul of U.S. export controls undertaken on Wolf’s watch.”

International trade partner Mac Fadlallah was named runner-up for Young Practitioner of the Year, having run “a highly regarded trade practice focused on the application of U.S. export controls and sanctions laws to non-U.S. entities, including subsidiaries of U.S. companies.” Mr. Fadlallah was recognized as being one of a very few young lawyers who could train the Ethiopian government “on how multilateral nonproliferation sanctions should factor into the country’s anti-money laundering framework, and then advise on the legislation to give it effect.”

Akin Gump was selected as Sanctions Law Firm of the year, U.S.A., having helped facilitate “an historic partnership between the U.S. Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Cuba-based Center of Molecular Immunology, successfully securing a first-of-its-kind U.S. government license that authorizes a commercial joint venture between a U.S. company and a Cuban state-owned organization.” As a result of this successful collaboration, Roswell Park has begun developing a new lung cancer treatment vaccine.

With one of the world’s largest export controls practices, Akin Gump was also recognized as “Highly Commended” for Export Controls Law Firm of the year, U.S.A. WorldECR noted the firm’s ability to recruit Mr. Wolf and fellow partner Jasper Helder, who joined the firm in the past year. They are part of a group that includes Thomas McCarthy, leader of the international trade practice, Wynn Segall and Jonathan Poling in Washington and Tatman Savio in Hong Kong. The team helped a company obtain a favorable export administration regulations classification ruling on an innovative information security product.

Now in their third year, the WorldECR Awards recognize “outstanding work, vision, best practice, commercial benefit to the company, and contribution to international security, of organizations and individuals working in the fields of export control and sanctions compliance and nonproliferation.”

Founded in 1945, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 900 lawyers in offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

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