Eric Sandberg-Zakian

Eric Sandberg-Zakian is the chair of Covington’s Trade Controls Enforcement Practice Group. He represents clients in criminal cases, civil enforcement actions, and internal investigations involving sanctions, export controls, and other national security laws.

Eric has represented leading global companies in some of the country’s most high-profile and complex trade controls cases in recent history. He specializes in defending clients in parallel investigations by multiple agencies, and has handled matters involving the Treasury, Commerce, State, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Department of Justice’s National Security and Criminal Divisions, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices across the country.

Eric also has extensive experience making voluntary disclosures to civil trade controls regulators in matters that could give rise to criminal prosecution, and he routinely helps companies enhance their compliance programs, conduct risk assessments, and navigate forward-looking compliance challenges, especially in the fields of economic sanctions and export controls. Eric has worked with clients in the aerospace, defense, technology, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, semiconductor, not-for-profit, consulting, travel, and financial sectors.

Eric maintains an active pro bono practice, and has helped pro bono clients with matters before the Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress, the Supreme Court, and federal appellate and district courts. Most notably, he served as lead counsel in a high-profile wrongful conviction case, overturning a double-murder conviction and freeing an innocent man who was serving a life sentence in Kentucky state prison.