Download or read book Kleptocracy The Theft of Nations written by Samuel James and published by Dr. Samuel Inbaraja S . This book was released on 2024-03-16 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word "kleptocracy" derives from the Greek kleptes (thief) and kratos (rule), meaning literally "rule by thieves." While we might envision petty pickpockets, kleptocracy is far grander and vastly more insidious. It is the abuse of public power to enrich a ruling class at the expense of the wider nation. It is systemic, institutionalized corruption at the highest levels of governance. History teems with rulers who plundered for personal gain. But modern kleptocracy stands apart in its sophistication, globalization, and sheer scale. Advances in international finance, opaque legal structures, and the erosion of democratic norms have created fertile ground for the 21st-century kleptocrat. This book is a journey into the heart of that system. It dissects the tools, techniques, and players that prop up kleptocratic regimes worldwide. We will explore how illicit wealth is hidden, laundered, and funneled into assets ranging from luxury real estate to political influence.
Download or read book Putin s Kleptocracy written by Karen Dawisha and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia. Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime. Putin’s Kleptocracy is the result of years of research into the KGB and the various Russian crime syndicates. Dawisha’s sources include Stasi archives; Russian insiders; investigative journalists in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, France, and Italy; and Western officials who served in Moscow. Russian journalists wrote part of this story when the Russian media was still free. “Many of them died for this story, and their work has largely been scrubbed from the Internet, and even from Russian libraries,” Dawisha says. “But some of that work remains.”
Download or read book American Kleptocracy written by Casey Michel and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.
Download or read book Thieves of State Why Corruption Threatens Global Security written by Sarah Chayes and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest. "I can’t imagine a more important book for our time." —Sebastian Junger The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity. The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.
Download or read book Corruption and Money Laundering written by D. Chaikin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a policy and legal analysis, this book shows how corruption facilitates money laundering, and vice versa. Furthermore, it demonstrates specifically how the responses developed to combat one type of financial crime can productively be employed in fighting the other.
Download or read book The Enablers written by Frank Vogl and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritarian regimes in many countries, and the men that lead them, depend on the international management of licit and illicit funds under their control. Frank Vogl shows that curbing their activities for their kleptocratic clients is critical to secure democracy, enhance national security, and ensure international financial stability.
Download or read book Kleptopia written by Tom Burgis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • An Economist Book of the Year “A must-read for anyone wanting to better understand what has already happened here in America and what lies ahead if Trump is reelected in November…. A magisterial account of the money and violence behind the world’s most powerful dictatorships.” –Washington Post In this shocking, meticulously reported work of narrative nonfiction, an award-winning investigative journalist exposes “capitalism’s monster”—global kleptocracy—and reveals how it is corrupting the world around us. They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh Desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London. They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power. In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together four stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption: the troublemaker from Basingstoke who stumbles on the secrets of a Swiss bank, the ex-Soviet billionaire constructing a private empire, the righteous Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and the Brooklyn crook protected by the CIA. Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.
Download or read book The Despot s Guide to Wealth Management written by J. C. Sharman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented new international moral and legal rule forbids one state from hosting money stolen by the leaders of another state. The aim is to counter grand corruption or kleptocracy ("rule by thieves"), when leaders of poorer countries—such as Marcos in the Philippines, Mobutu in the Congo, and more recently those overthrown in revolutions in the Arab world and Ukraine—loot billions of dollars at the expense of their own citizens. This money tends to end up hosted in rich countries. These host states now have a duty to block, trace, freeze, and seize these illicit funds and hand them back to the countries from which they were stolen. In The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management, J. C. Sharman asks how this anti-kleptocracy regime came about, how well it is working, and how it could work better. Although there have been some real achievements, the international campaign against grand corruption has run into major obstacles. The vested interests of banks, lawyers, and even law enforcement often favor turning a blind eye to foreign corruption proceeds. Recovering and returning looted assets is a long, complicated, and expensive process. Sharman used a private investigator, participated in and observed anti-corruption policy, and conducted more than a hundred interviews with key players. He also draws on various journalistic exposés, whistle-blower accounts, and government investigations to inform his comparison of the anti-kleptocracy records of the United States, Britain, Switzerland, and Australia. Sharman calls for better policing, preventative measures, and use of gatekeepers like bankers, lawyers, and real estate agents. He also recommends giving nongovernmental organizations and for-profit firms more scope to independently investigate corruption and seize stolen assets.
Download or read book Moneyland written by Oliver Bullough and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER PRESENTER OF THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES 'HOW TO STEAL A TRILLION' SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2019 SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AN ECONOMIST POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY MAIL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'You cannot understand power, wealth and poverty without knowing about Moneyland.' Simon Kuper, New Statesman 2019: democracy is eating itself, inequality is skyrocketing, the system is breaking apart. Why? Because in 1962, some bankers in London had an idea that changed the world. That idea was called 'offshore'. It meant that, for the first time, thieves could dream big. They could take everything. Join investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into the hidden world of the new global kleptocrats. See the poor countries where public money is stolen and the rich ones where it is laundered and invested. Watch the crooks at work and at play, and meet their respectable, white-collar enablers. Learn how the new system works and begin to see how we can tackle it.
Download or read book The Puppet Masters written by Emile van der Does de Willebois and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report examines the use of these entities in nearly all cases of corruption. It builds upon case law, interviews with investigators, corporate registries and financial institutions and a 'mystery shopping' exercise to provide evidence of this criminal practice.
Download or read book Red Notice written by Bill Browder and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freezing Order, the follow-up to Red Notice, is available now! “[Red Notice] does for investing in Russia and the former Soviet Union what Liar’s Poker did for our understanding of Salomon Brothers, Wall Street, and the mortgage-backed securities business in the 1980s. Browder’s business saga meshes well with the story of corruption and murder in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, making Red Notice an early candidate for any list of the year’s best books” (Fortune). “Part John Grisham-like thriller, part business and political memoir.” —The New York Times This is a story about an accidental activist. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune. Along the way he exposed corruption, and when he did, he barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of that, he became Putin’s number one enemy, especially after Browder succeeded in having a law passed in the United States—The Magnitsky Act—that punishes a list of Russians implicated in the lawyer’s murder. Putin famously retaliated with a law that bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world, and also the story of how, without intending to, he found meaning in his life.
Download or read book Bribery and Extortion written by Alexandra Addison Wrage and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-09-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bribery plays a significant role in international criminal activity. Terrorists pay bribes. Money-launderers pay bribes. Those who traffic in people, narcotics, and illegal arms pay bribes. People pay immigration officers not to ask, customs officials not to inspect, and police officers not to investigate. Bribes follow patterns that are not at all mysterious to the officials, salesmen, and citizens who seek them and pay them. Using a series of international cases, Wrage examines bribery, peeling back the mystique and ambiguity and exposing the very simple transactions that lie beneath. She shows how these seemingly everyday transactions can affect security, democratization, and human aid. Examples from around the world help to illustrate the nature of the problem and efforts at combating it. Bribery plays a significant role in international criminal activity. Terrorists pay bribes. Money-launderers pay bribes. Those who traffic in people, narcotics, and illegal arms pay bribes. People pay immigration officers not to ask, customs officials not to inspect, and police officers not to investigate. At corporate headquarters in the United States, it can be easy to dismiss modest bribes in distant countries as an unfortunate cost of doing business. Bribes follow patterns that are not at all mysterious to the officials, salesmen, and citizens who seek them and pay them. Using a series of international cases, Wrage examines bribery, peeling back the mystique and ambiguity and exposing the very simple transactions that lie beneath. She shows how these seemingly everyday transactions can affect security, democratization, and human aid around the globe. Bribery and Extortion presents a clear picture of the world of bribery and the havoc it can wreak on whole populations. Wrage covers commercial bribery, administrative and service-based bribery, and extortion. She considers bribery and extortion at both high levels of government and lower levels on the street. Examples from around the world help to illustrate the nature of the problem and efforts at combating it. The book concludes with practical suggestions and an assessment of current efforts to stem the tide of bribery and restore transparency to everyday transactions in all realms.
Download or read book Crude Intentions written by Alexandra Gillies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billions of dollars stolen from citizens are circling the globe, enriching powerful individuals, altering political outcomes, and disadvantaging everyday people. News headlines provide glimpses of how this corruption works and why it matters: President Trump's businesses struck deals with oligarchs and sold property to secretive shell companies; the Panama Papers leak triggered investigations in 79 countries; and, corruption scandals toppled heads of state in Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea. But how do these pieces fit together? And if the corruption is so vast and so tied up with powerful interests, how do we begin to fight back? To find answers, Crude Intentions examines the corruption crisis that erupted during the recent oil boom. From 2008 to 2014, oil prices shot through the roof. Motivated by more than nine trillion dollars in new oil money, corruption followed apace. Examining the oil boom is like placing a drop of dye in the circulatory system of global corruption, and watching as it reveals the system's channels and pathways. Company bosses signed off on risky schemes to snap up choice oil blocks. Politicians in Brazil and Nigeria stole billions to build up their election war chests. Kleptocrats in Angola, Azerbaijan, and Russia seized upon the oil wealth to cement their hold on power. And an army of bankers, accountants, and lawyers lined up to help these corrupt actors stash their loot in the global system of shell companies and tax havens that serves today's super-rich. The money then bought yachts, mansions, and even a few foreign politicians. Drawing on information exposed by intrepid journalists, prosecutors, and whistle blowers, Crude Intentions tells jaw-dropping stories of corruption and asks what we can learn from them. The cases reveal common tactics, but also vulnerabilities in this web of fraud. These are the starting points for building a smarter fight against corruption, in the oil sector and well beyond.
Download or read book KLEPTOCRACY written by Dr. Dominic F Dixon and published by Dr. Dominic F Dixon. This book was released on 2017-05-29 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kleptocracy (from Ancient Greek κλέπτης (kléptēs, “thief”), κλέπτω (kléptō, “steal”), from Proto-Indo-European *klep- (“to steal”); and from the Ancient Greek suffix - κρατία (-kratía), from κράτος (krátos, “power, rule”; klépto- thieves + -kratos rule,literally "rule by thieves") [1][2] is a government with corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves an obsession with television ratings over state concerns and embezzlement funds at the expense of the wider population. [3] [4] This paper is aimed at drawing attention to anti-corruption activists and advocacies against corruption; and to postulate an international perspective of the innumerable forms of modus operandi envisaged by Kleptocrats. Research and cases studies have been derived from dozens of publications, interviewing of bureaucrats and diplomats, political ministers and investigative journalists. In the classical sense, corrupt rulers or kleptocrats, (ab)use their power to exploit their nation’s resources for personal gain, ambition and political supremacy. There are varied aspects of corruption such as money laundering, fraud, electoral crimes, embezzlement and the list goes on. A society does not diminish or become corrupt overnight, it happens progressively. Therefore, I wish to reiterate that scholarship emphasis needs to be on ‘individual corruption’ to begin with. For instance, a nation may be corrupt because of its leaders and their connivance with the underworld. For instance, Mohammed Suharto, President of Indonesia (1967-1998) had embezzled an estimated $15-35 billion and Arnold Aleman, President of Nicaragua (1997-2002) who embezzled an estimated $100 million.
Download or read book Global Economic History A Very Short Introduction written by Robert C. Allen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are some countries rich and others poor? In 1500, the income differences were small, but they have grown dramatically since Columbus reached America. Since then, the interplay between geography, globalization, technological change, and economic policy has determined the wealth and poverty of nations. The industrial revolution was Britain's path breaking response to the challenge of globalization. Western Europe and North America joined Britain to form a club of rich nations by pursuing four polices-creating a national market by abolishing internal tariffs and investing in transportation, erecting an external tariff to protect their fledgling industries from British competition, banks to stabilize the currency and mobilize domestic savings for investment, and mass education to prepare people for industrial work. Together these countries pioneered new technologies that have made them ever richer. Before the Industrial Revolution, most of the world's manufacturing was done in Asia, but industries from Casablanca to Canton were destroyed by western competition in the nineteenth century, and Asia was transformed into 'underdeveloped countries' specializing in agriculture. The spread of economic development has been slow since modern technology was invented to fit the needs of rich countries and is ill adapted to the economic and geographical conditions of poor countries. A few countries - Japan, Soviet Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps China - have, nonetheless, caught up with the West through creative responses to the technological challenge and with Big Push industrialization that has achieved rapid growth through investment coordination. Whether other countries can emulate the success of East Asia is a challenge for the future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Many Faces of Corruption written by J. Edgardo Campos and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007-04-04 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption... How can policymakers and practitioners better comprehend the many forms and shapes that this socialpandemic takes? From the delivery of essential drugs, the reduction in teacher absenteeism, the containment of illegal logging, the construction of roads, the provision of water andelectricity, the international trade in oil and gas, the conduct of public budgeting and procurement, and the management of public revenues, corruption shows its many faces. 'The Many Faces of Corruption' attempts to bring greater clarity to the often murky manifestations of this virulent and debilitating social disease. It explores the use of prototype road maps to identify corruption vulnerabilities, suggests corresponding 'warning signals,' and proposes operationally useful remedial measures in each of several selected sectors and for a selected sampleof cross cutting public sector functions that are particularlyprone to corruption and that are critical to sector performance.Numerous technical experts have come together in this effort to develop an operationally useful approach to diagnosing and tackling corruption. 'The Many Faces of Corruption' is an invaluable reference for policymakers, practitioners, andresearchers engaged in the business of development.
Download or read book The Senility of Vladimir P written by Michael Honig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set twenty-odd years from now, it opens on Patient Number One—Vladimir Putin, largely forgotten in his presidential dacha, serviced by a small coterie of house staff, drifting in and out of his memories of the past. His nurse, charged with the twenty-four-hour care of his patient, is blissfully unaware that his colleagues are using their various positions to skim money, in extraordinarily creative ways, from the top of their employer’s seemingly inexhaustible riches.But when a family tragedy means that the nurse suddenly needs to find a fantastical sum of money fast, the dacha’s chef lets him in on the secret world of backhanders and bribes going on around him, and opens his eyes to a brewing war between the staff and the new housekeeper, the ruthless new sheriff in town.A brilliantly cast modern-day Animal Farm, The Senility of Vladimir P. is a coruscating political fable that shows, through an honest man slipping his ethical moorings, how Putin has not only bankrupted his nation economically, but has also diminished it culturally and spiritually.
