November 19, 2014 | Press Release

FDD Launches New Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance

WASHINGTON – The Foundation for Defense of Democracies today unveiled a new project focused on the use of financial and economic tools to combat terrorism and protect and promote national and global security. FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) will provide scholarly research on the use of financial and economic power for the global policy community.

CSIF will promote research on how America can best use and preserve its financial and economic power to promote its interests, defend the integrity of the financial system, and protect against adversaries leveraging their own economic resources and strategies against the United States and its allies.

The Center will be led by Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s executive director and an expert on sanctions programs who has regularly advised U.S. administrations, Congress and foreign governments on the use of economic warfare. Juan Zarate, former deputy national security adviser for combatting terrorism, former assistant secretary of the Treasury, and the author of Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare, will serve as CSIF’s senior counselor.  Chip Poncy, former director of the Office for Strategic Policy for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the U.S. Department of Treasury, will be a senior adviser to CSIF. Jonathan Schanzer, FDD’s vice president for research and a former Treasury terrorism finance analyst, will also contribute to the Center.

“Economic warfare has emerged as one of the most effective ways to fight terrorists and pressure adversaries in the 21st century,” Dubowitz said. “FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance will be the epicenter of research designing and examining creative ways to use financial leverage to preserve American values, as well as to protect our financial system from those who would disrupt it or use it for nefarious means.”

CSIF will produce original research on numerous topics that connect illicit finance and national security, including money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, proliferation financing, cyber crime and economic espionage, and corruption and kleptocracy. It will catalyze global action from both government and the private sector to advance security and address core challenges to implementing financial power.

“FDD has been a leader for many years in highlighting the use of sanctions and other economic tools to combat rogue actors and influence potential adversaries,” Zarate said. “I am looking forward to working with FDD to build a Center that will design cutting edge analysis and strategies that will help shape the use of economic and financial power in national security and prove valuable to the U.S. government, its allies, and the private sector.”

CSIF will work with a wide range of experts, including FDD fellows and analysts, and will soon be announcing a Board of Advisers that will provide strategic guidance.

“The work of the Center will be geared around the needs of the Treasury and other arms of the United States government that grapple with the world of illicit finance,” Schanzer said. “Our team knows how the bureaucracy works, but at the same time, it will be able to operate with the kind of creativity and flexibility that has earned FDD its reputation over the years.”

“This new Center will fill an important void by studying the opportunities and threats of applying economic pressure as an instrument of global security and national power,” Poncy said. 

More information on FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance is available at defenddemocracy.org/csif

About the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)3 policy institute focusing on foreign policy and national security. Founded in 2001, FDD combines policy research, democracy and counterterrorism education, strategic communications and investigative journalism in support of its mission to promote pluralism, defend democratic values and fight the ideologies that drive terrorism. Visit our website at www.defenddemocracy.org and connect with us on TwitterFacebook and YouTube.

Media Contact:
Matthew E. Berger, Senior Director of Communications
[email protected]
202.403.2910