AFC in Practice - Export Controls Ep.2: Lifting the Veil on Global Trade Risks

Holger Pauco-Dirscherl is an experienced and passionate Senior Financial Crime Professional with a unique blend of international knowledge, expertise and experience and fluent in English together with a good reputation in the national and international Financial Crime field. He holds an MBA from The Open University Business School and is certified as CAMS-RM, CAMS-Audit, CAMS, CGSS, CAMS-FCI, CAFS, CFE and CFCS. 

He worked in different operational and managerial roles within Financial Crime covering all areas such as AML, CTF, Fraud, Sanctions and ABC as well as KYC/CDD, KYE, Cross-Border Compliance, International Information Sharing, FATCA and other Compliance topics. Within these areas he covered both operational activities such as Procedures, Trainings, Monitoring, Screening and Controls as well as strategic activities as Risk Assessments, Policies, Projects and Framework build-ups within an ever changing local and global regulatory environment. Holger also investigated large, complex and international Money Laundering, Sanctions, Corruption and Fraud cases and identified suspicious activity and weak controls, processes, manuals and policies. Within his activities he offered pragmatic solutions to minimize Financial Crime and Regulatory Risk. 

He is also a recognized SME for Financial Crime heading the ACAMS Germany Chapter which he also founded, giving a wide range of trainings and acts as a speaker on conferences and symposiums both national and international.

Hdeel Abdelhady is founder and principal of MassPoint PLLC, where she advises U.S. and international financial institutions, companies, and others on sanctions, export controls, foreign investment (CFIUS), and anti-financial crime compliance.

Ms. Abdelhady teaches “Regulation of Foreign Access to U.S. Technology” at The George Washington University Law School, covering the intersection of sanctions, export controls, and foreign investment laws designed to protect U.S. leadership in cutting-edge technologies such as semiconductors, AI, and quantum. She has served as Professorial Lecturer in Law for 20 years.

Prior to founding MassPoint, she practiced at major U.S. law firms and served as secondment counsel to banks in Washington, D.C. and Dubai. Her analyses and commentary have appeared in Law360, JD Supra, Reuters, BBC News, American Banker, and the World Bank Legal Review, among other publications.

Ms. Abdelhady is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and serves as an advisor to the DC Chapter of the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists.

Margaret is founder and managing attorney with Cassidy Law.  She advises businesses doing or looking to do business with the U.S. Federal Government on U.S. acquisition, national security and export control regulations.  She represents businesses under government investigation and conducts internal investigations for clients.

She has over 15 years of experience advising business from start-ups to global publicly traded companies on developing and managing effective ethics and compliance programs.  Before starting her firm, Margaret was PwC’s Government Ethics and Compliance Leader and GE Transportations Global Compliance Counsel.

Federal and state agencies have approved Margaret to serve as an independent monitor to evaluate and report on companies’ compliance with laws and settlement agreements when the company has been required to work with a monitor to oversee their business.  Margaret started her career as a state and local prosecutor investigating and prosecuting cases to include fraud and public corruption as well as a variety of other crimes.

Margaret is currently vice-chair of the D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility and chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Business Law Section Publication Board. She is past chair of the Business Law Section Corporate Compliance and Business Crimes Committee and former co-chair of the Global Issues Forum for the Association of Corporate Counsel National Capital Region Chapter.

Margaret has developed and conducted seminars and trainings for organizations, business executives, and employees including the Transportation Research Board, a division of the U.S. National Academies; the ABA, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the D.C. Small Business Administration, the Association of Corporate Counsel National Capital Region Chapter, and Today’s General Counsel. Among the topics on which she presents are federal government contracting, exporting, conducting investigations as well as implementing ethics and compliance programs. Margaret is an editor and author of The Lawyers’ Corporate Social Responsibility Deskbook, published by the ABA Business Law Section.

Margaret is a member of the District of Columbia, Virginia, Ohio (inactive), Pennsylvania (inactive), and New York (inactive) bars. She earned a BS in finance from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and, after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, clerked with the Ohio Court of Appeals.