Paul Massaro is the senior policy advisor for counter-corruption and sanctions. Paul’s work has advanced the recognition of corruption as a national security threat. He has been described in the media as “one of America’s foremost corruption experts” and an “endless source of democratic ingenuity.” He has worked on over 13 pieces of counter-corruption legislation and facilitated the founding of the Congressional Caucus against Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance against Kleptocracy. Paul also covers German-speaking Europe and East Asia.
His work on the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a landmark law redefining doping as fraud and making it illegal in international competitions anywhere in the world, has for the first time provided justice to clean athletes and held to account the authoritarian actors who use sport as a tool of foreign policy. The Associated Press described the unanimous passage of the act as “a remarkable achievement considering the polarization in U.S. politics.” His work on the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act was similarly groundbreaking, serving as the first-ever U.S. law to respond to abuse of INTERPOL by authoritarian regimes.
Paul is regularly quoted and published by major media outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, POLITICO, and Foreign Policy, and he speaks frequently on panels, podcasts, and broadcasts about corruption, sanctions, and European security policy. His work is featured in Casey Michel’s book American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. He co-hosts the award-winning Making a Killing podcast, which explores how corruption is reshaping global politics. He is a fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, and a member of the Royal United Services Institute’s Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance Taskforce. Paul is an alumnus of the National Endowment for Democracy Penn Kemble Fellowship and the Robertson Foundation for Government Fellowship. He speaks fluent German.
