Farhad Alavi is a Washington, DC-based attorney and Managing Partner at Akrivis Law Group, PLLC, a boutique law firm in Washington, New York, and Miami advising clients around the world on corporate, trade regulatory law (e.g., sanctions, export controls, CFIUS, anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, and customs) as well as trade-related criminal white collar defense, investigations, and litigation. He is the author of the Sanctions and Export Controls Practice Guide published by the Practising Law Institute (PLI). Mr. Alavi has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC).
With over 20 years of experience, Mr. Alavi represents companies, organizations, and individuals around the globe. He has secured the removal of six individuals from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) SDN List, including former Bank Otkritie CEO-President and Russian Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov, and multiple companies off the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List and the Boycott Requester List, as well as one removal from the Unverified List. Mr. Alavi has also represented numerous individuals and companies under federal criminal investigation for alleged violations of U.S. sanctions and/or export controls. He was also one of the leading counsel in Epsilon Elecs., Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, 857 F.3d 913 (D.C. Cir. 2017), a pivotal and cited case involving OFAC’s enforcement authority. Mr. Alavi has also successfully secured the release of numerous detentions of shipments by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), including at the protest level.
Mr. Alavi previously worked as an attorney in a number of major international law firms in Washington, and in one he was based in that firm’s Washington and Abu Dhabi offices.
Mr. Alavi has been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Arabian Business, The National, and other major publications around the world, has been published in the American Bar Association’s International Lawyer journal, has appeared on National Public Radio (NPR), BBC World, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Arabic, China’s CGTN, BBC Persian, Iran International, Voice of America Persian, Al Hurra, and has taught Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses on international commercial transactions and U.S. sanctions laws on Iran and broader topics regarding U.S. legal compliance, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
Mr. Alavi is admitted to practice law in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. He holds an LL.M. in Banking & Financial Law from Boston University, a J.D. from George Mason University, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Tufts University. He is fluent in Persian (Farsi) and Spanish, and has a basic understanding of German, Arabic, and Turkish.
A full professional biography is available on the Akrivis Law Group website.
Valentin Povarchuk is an international trade compliance lawyer with nearly two decades of experience. He began his career at well-known law firms, including Steptoe & Johnson, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, and Arent Fox LLP, and subsequently practiced as in-house trade compliance counsel at 3M Company and Seagate Technology.
Valentin has advised clients on a wide range of matters, export controls, economic sanctions, antiboycott, customs, antidumping and countervailing duty, and World Trade Organization (WTO) matters. Over the course of his career, Valentin worked with clients in a variety of sectors, including energy, oil & gas, aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and technology companies. At Akrivis he regularly advises overseas-based clients on critical U.S. export control and sanctions matters.
Valentin has been a frequent speaker and author on export control, sanctions, and supply chain topics at local, national, and international conferences and publications.
Valentin is admitted to practice in Washington, DC, and Minnesota. He is a native speaker of Russian and has a working proficiency in French.
U.S. Sanctions Regulations Blog 