On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Bloomberg reporter Anna Edgerton, who specializes in tech and national security issues, and recently covered the congressional hearing on TikTok.

Tom and Anna discuss these and other questions:

• What is the relationship between TikTok, ByteDance, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
• Does TikTok pose a threat to U.S. national security? If so, how serious is the threat?
• What is “Project Texas”? Is it sufficient to protect users’ personal data?
• What are the main proposals on the Hill to ban TikTok and how likely are they to succeed?

On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Pavel Ivlev, a former lawyer for Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was the subject of an Interpol Red Notice and sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for his role in the case.

Tom and Pavel discuss:

• The real causes of the Yukos case
• What the case tells us about the relationship of business and politics in Russia
• How the case will be viewed in Russian history
• The effectiveness of sanctions on Russian oligarchs

On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Vladas Stankevicius, an experienced corporate compliance lawyer who served as an international expert for World Athletics, where he lead efforts to ingrain governance reforms and a culture of zero tolerance for doping. He also advised the World Athletics Taskforce chair as to the fitness for purpose of the compliance program of the Russian Athletics Federation.

Tom and Vladas discuss:

• The current World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) sanctions against Russia
• Proposals to ban Russian and Belarussian athletes from the 2024 Olympics
• The 2014 Sochi Olympics doping scandal and the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act
• Various integrity violations in sports
• Best compliance practices and how to clean up sports

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. government froze billions of dollars in Russian Central Bank assets held in the United States. What can be done with these assets? Can they be permanently seized and used to help Ukraine? On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Ingrid Wuerth Brunk, Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law at Vanderbilt Law School. Ingrid is a distinguished scholar of international law and has written extensively on foreign sovereign immunity, transnational litigation, sanctions and other issues related to international law.

Tom and Ingrid discuss these and other questions:

• Can the U.S. government seize the Russian Central Bank assets?
• Are these assets protected by sovereign immunity?
• If the U.S. government seizes these assets, can they be used to help Ukraine?
• Should Russia be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism?
• Would designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism deprive it of sovereign immunity?

On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Bruce Ohr, formerly head of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces at DOJ and now a strategist with the International Wildlife Trust, an NGO committed to combatting illegal wildlife trafficking through a distinct focus on transnational organized crime groups.  

Tom and Bruce discuss:

• How does international organized crime contribute to species endangerment?
• Which species are most endangered?
• How lucrative is illegal wildlife trafficking?  
• How do criminal syndicates obtain, transport and sell protected wildlife?
• How can NGOs work with national law enforcement to combat illegal wildlife trafficking?

On this week’s episode, Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Andrew McCabe, former Acting Director of the FBI and now a CNN commentator and professor at George Mason University, and author of The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.

Tom and Andrew discuss:

• The Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case
• The most serious criminal threats to U.S. national security and U.S. businesses
• Russian cyber attacks
• The greatest challenge that the FBI is facing
• Politically motivated violence in the U.S.

On this week’s episode of “The New Cold War: Risk, Sanctions, Compliance,” Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Nader Uskowi who has served as a senior advisor to the Pentagon on some of the most sensitive policy issues in Iran and Afghanistan. Nader is also the president of Sagewood Consulting LLC, and is the author of Temperature Rising: Iran Revolutionary Guards and Wars in the Middle East.

Tom and Nader discuss these and other topics:

• The current protests in Iran and the seriousness of the challenge to the regime
• The new U.S. sanctions on Iran and General License D-2
• The effect of the protests on the possible resuscitation of the Iran nuclear deal
• The effect of OPEC's announced production cuts on the political situation in Iran

On this week’s episode of “The New Cold War: Risk, Sanctions, Compliance,” Stroock Partner Tom Firestone talks to Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery (WGB).

Tom and Drago discuss these and other topics:

• Drago’s lessons learned from 9 years as the head of the WGB
• The WGB’s latest recommendations on combatting foreign bribery
• Addressing the demand side of international bribery  
• The importance of non-trial resolutions in foreign bribery cases
• The challenges of anti-corruption reform and reconstruction in Ukraine