Bio

With a full appreciation of the practical, economic, and legal challenges that arise at the intersection of international transactions and complex legislative and regulatory regimes, Eric Mcclafferty helps a wide range of clients pursue their business goals in an ever-changing compliance landscape. Eric focuses his practice on counseling, compliance programs, internal investigations, and enforcement matters related to economic sanctions and denied parties; export controls; the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA); customs, reviews, and investigations before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS); and antidumping and countervailing duties. His substantive knowledge of the law and insights into how regulators approach and address issues implicated by his clients’ activities allow him to develop effective approaches aligned with their objectives. As one client told Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, ​“Eric McClafferty is a superb, practical, and pragmatic lawyer with a keen and deep commercial understanding of the business.” Eric guides senior company officers and compliance personnel involved in international transactions through the restrictions imposed by evolving U.S. economic sanctions and other rules administered by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). He is dedicated to ensuring his client’s transactions are properly screened to exclude the involvement of the various types of denied parties under U.S. law. With comprehensive risk assessment and internal reviews as a foundation, Eric has helped hundreds of large and small companies (and their foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures) establish compliance programs that reduce the risk of potential violations connected to U.S. sanctions. Additionally, Eric advises on export licensing and classification; performs due diligence export compliance reviews; establishes company and product-specific compliance and training programs for product, software, and technology exports; and guides clients through export enforcement investigations and penalty negotiations related to exports of military, dual-use, and nuclear items. Eric’s clients include exporters of industrial, aerospace, high-technology, and agricultural products and technology, such as chemicals, chemical processing equipment, pharmaceuticals, software, electronics, unmanned vehicles, and military items, including aircraft and related components, computers, satellite software and components, semiconductors, nuclear power plant components, and specialty metals, powders, and alloys. Leveraging the trust and credibility he has earned with regulators over his decades of practice, Eric has developed productive working relationships within all U.S. government export control agencies as well as at the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission. He has deftly managed hundreds of export control internal and external investigations, bringing numerous voluntary self-disclosures and other export enforcement matters to successful conclusions. Eric also conducts internal investigations, advises on company-run investigations, helps companies improve their FCPA compliance programs, and conducts investigations of possible FCPA violations and other potentially improper foreign country-based financial transactions in an M&A context. Eric regularly conducts complex CFIUS reviews and works with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency to put outside directors and FOCI mitigation programs in place to prevent unauthorized releases of classified data. He holds a ​“secret” clearance from the U.S. government and has participated in CFIUS review processes involving non-U.S. company purchases of U.S. manufacturing and services entities that handled classified data and highly sensitive defense and dual-use products and technologies. A former foreign service officer, Eric also has many years of experience representing domestic producers and importers in antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings before the International Trade Administration (ITA) and International Trade Commission (ITC). He has worked with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on foreign market access issues, section 301 actions, and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) petitions and reviews. His skills extend to representing clients in World Trade Organization (WTO) matters, including WTO dispute settlement issues. Eric also advises corporations and other importers concerning a wide variety of matters before the U.S. Customs Service and has appeared numerous times on behalf of clients before the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.