Michael (Mike) Parker
Partner
Michael (Mike) Parker is a Partner at Arktouros PLLC. Prior to this role, he served as the head of the anti-money laundering and sanctions practice at a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in U.S. economic sanctions administration and compliance. In private practice, Mr. Parker was the principal attorney responsible for the very first successful lifting of U.S. economic sanctions of a Russian national following the invasion of Ukraine from the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List) administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). His current and previous clients include prominent industrialists, top financial institutions, and private equity funds, in addition to international expert witness engagements. Additionally, Mr. Parker is an Adjunct Professor of National Security Law in the Georgetown University Security Studies Program.
Mr. Parker is a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), where he served as a subject matter expert on economic sanctions for MLARS and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the country. During his six-plus years at MLARS, Mr. Parker was responsible for money laundering and forfeiture investigations of transnational criminal organizations and foreign threat actors, including serving as the lead MLARS prosecutor for the “Panama Papers” case. Among his matters, Mr. Parker prosecuted cases involving major international financial institutions, foreign ransomware actors, hostile adversarial nations, criminals who launder funds through cryptocurrency, and complex trade-based money laundering networks. In 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) awarded Mr. Parker with the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Counterintelligence Investigation for his work on a North Korea-related sanctions evasion and money laundering case that was perpetrated through the U.S. banking system.
Prior to his time at DOJ, Mr. Parker spent nearly eight years at OFAC where he served as a Sanctions Investigator, and later a Section Chief in OFAC’s Enforcement Division. During his tenure at OFAC, Mr. Parker was responsible for sanctions investigations of transnational criminal organizations, cartel-related targets under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, and high-profile Middle Eastern sanctions targets under various legal authorities. He also held supervisory authority over one of three OFAC Enforcement divisions and was the supervisory enforcement officer for violations of U.S. sanctions programs.
