AFC Trends & Typologies: Implications of Designating Cartels as FTOs

Sam Cousins is a Senior Associate at ACAMS, where his work includes supporting public-private partnerships and strengthening ACAMS thought leadership pillar through the development of content on sanctions and risk, particularly the Sanctions Masterclass program and Global Monthly Update. Sam's work also focuses on countering ransomware financing, which includes enhancing industry awareness of the anti-financial crime risks associated with ransomware attacks and supporting the mitigation of those risks through policies, training and public-private dialogue.

Prior to ACAMS, Sam worked on the Sanctions Policy team at UK Finance - the trade association for the UK banking sector.

Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. She is also the director of Brookings’ Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and co-director of the Africa Security Initiative at Brookings. Previously, she was also the co-director of the Opioid Crisis in America: Domestic and International Dimensions. Dr. Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts, insurgency, terrorism, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork has covered Afghanistan, South Asia, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Iraq, Somalia and the Horn of Africa, Nigeria, and other African regions.

In 2020 and 2021, Dr. Felbab-Brown served as a senior advisor to the congressionally-mandated USIP Afghanistan Study Group.

She is the author of five books - Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops, and Corruption (forthcoming); The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It (2017); Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder (2017; co-authored); Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan (2013); and Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (2010) as well as many policy reports, articles, opeds, and congressional testimonies. She frequently consults for the U.S. government. A recipient of numerous awards, Dr. Felbab-Brown received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Mike is a partner in Morgan Lewis’s International Trade & National Securities practice, with a focus on compliance and investigations regarding U.S. export controls, economic sanctions, tariffs, outbound investment rules, and inbound controls.