Sasha Abboud

Sasha Abboud is a Senior Associate in FRA’s Dubai office. She joined FRA in 2023 with experience in investigations, fraud-risk assessment reviews, financial services regulatory advisory, US-FCPA compliance reviews, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) reviews, ethics hotline service and transaction advisory services.

Prior to joining FRA, Sasha spent over 4 years' in Forensics with the KPMG Lower Gulf practice. She is a certified public accountant (CPA) and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics with Distinction from the American University of Beirut. Sasha is fluent in English, French and Arabic. 

Sasha’s representative expertise includes:

• Participating in multiple legal investigations for one of the largest US based pharmaceutical companies to identify any misconduct, non-compliance, bribery, or corruption through the review of distribution agreements, local and international company policies, and relevant sales data, and through multiple interviews with the relevant stakeholders.
• Conducting a maturity assessment to identify areas of improvement across the prevention, detection and response mechanisms, and subsequently established a Fraud and Corruption/Ethics/Integrity Framework for a major government authority in the UAE. This enables organizations to effectively manage fraud risk in the applicable manner relating to organizational size and complexity.
• Conducting a fraud risk assessment, on behalf of an Investment Bank and a major independent government authority to identify and remediate gaps in line with prevalent best practices.
• Participating in the review of the effectiveness of the internal controls and anti-bribery and corruption compliance program, policies and procedures for one of the largest France based pharmaceutical companies and a US Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company’s business operations across the Gulf region. 
• Participating in a project for a high-status company in the UAE where KPMG assisted the said company in recovering an outstanding receivable amount of approximately AED 200 million.
• Participating in a dispute of a leading system integrator and an ICT solution provider in the UAE.
• Managing the whistleblowing hotline services team in KPMG for almost ten clients in the region.
• Working across key regulatory areas, of which new laws and regulatory frameworks, financial crime compliance, including both Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Sanctions compliance.