Lorraine Lawlor is the Chief of Compliance Outreach at the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. A CPA by trade, her primary responsibilities are to ensure that U.S. companies and individuals comply with U.S. economic sanctions imposed against foreign governments and groups of individuals, including terrorists and narcotics traffickers. She has been with OFAC since 1990, before which she was a Revenue Agent with the Internal Revenue Service, auditing primarily corporate tax returns. During her tenure at IRS, she was active in the Revenue Agent training program and ran workshops on small business taxation for the Small Business Administration.

At OFAC, Ms. Lawlor plays an integral role in the drafting of executive orders imposing sanctions and the regulations that implement them, as well as playing a key role in developing policy with regard to enforcement actions taken by OFAC against financial institutions. On a daily basis, she works closely with the financial and exporting communities to ensure compliance with U.S. sanctions law, working with all of the bank regulatory agencies, FinCEN, the SEC and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. She played an intricate role in the development of the OFAC module in FFIEC’s AML/BSA Examination Guidelines and was a primary architect of the OFAC Enforcement Guidelines for FFIEC-Regulated Financial Institutions published in January 2006, as well as OFAC’s new Enforcement Guidelines published in September 2008. During her tenure at OFAC, she has performed innumerable audits of companies and financial institutions, as well as provided advice on potential transactions impacted by OFAC’s programs. She has conducted workshops and seminars for the financial and exporting communities across the country through such organizations as the American Bankers Association, the American Bar Association, America’s Community Bankers, and the International Financial Services Association.

In addition to her every day duties, Lorraine has been involved in several multi-lateral meetings with foreign governments in an effort to coordinate sanctions efforts and is actively involved in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), serving as OFAC’s primary coordinator for issues addressed by that body.