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 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 Summary of Tom Burgis s Kleptopia written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-04-06T22:59:00Z with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Nigel Wilkins was a banker who had never been a banker. He was too shy to shoot looks of granite, but behind it lay not only the stifled arrogance of the cleverest man, but also an unbearable awkwardness. He loved economics, the art of telling money’s stories. #2 Nigel was a free man because he had made plenty of money and had little to spend it on. He preferred his old radio and the antediluvian three-piece suite his friend had given him. He had been a quiet child, but with adulthood came a distrust of authority that could approach contempt. #3 Nigel was a compliance officer at a Swiss bank, and he was excited about his new job. He thought he could force the bank to comply with regulations. His eagerness did not put Charlotte at ease. She warned him not to go to BSI. But he went anyway, and for a while, no ill came of it. #4 Nigel’s father had always said that anyone who did wrong would get what was coming to them. Nigel thought that principle needed some enforcing. He had stumbled upon the world’s biggest fraud, and there was something else, something deeper, connected to what was happening to money.

Download or read book On Corruption in America written by Sarah Chayes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.

Download or read book Money Men written by Dan McCrum and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The financial investigation of the decade... Money Men instantly enters the canon of great financial crime books' Bradley Hope, author of The Billion Dollar Whale 'A rip-roaring ride into the underworld of the global economy' Tom Burgis, author of Kleptopia 'Required reading' The Economist 'A cross between the Enron scandal and Rosemary's Baby' John Lanchester, London Review of Books 'Reads like a crime drama' New Statesman 'The culmination of years of careful investigative work... Gripping' Evening Standard 'A thrilling, head-spinning book' Irish Times 'A rollercoaster read that reveals everything that's wrong with our financial system' Catherine Belton Now adapted as the Netflix documentary Skandal!, this is the stranger-than-fiction story of Wirecard, once a $30 billion tech darling, now a smouldering wreck, by the journalist who brought it crashing down - perfect for those who loved Bad Blood and Empire of Pain. When journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate the hot new tech company challenging Silicon Valley, everything about Wirecard looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up around the world, it was reporting runaway growth and the CEO even wore a black turtleneck in tribute to Steve Jobs. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum dug deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more dangerous than he ever imagined: a world of short sellers and whistleblowers, pornographers and private militias, hackers and spies. Before long he realised that he wasn't the only one in pursuit. Shadowy figures were following him through the streets of London, high-flying lawyers were sending ominous letters to his boss, and he was named as the prime suspect in a criminal inquiry. The race was on to prove his suspicions and clear his name. Money Men is the astonishing true story of Wirecard's multi-billion-dollar fraud, Europe's biggest new tech darling revealed as a house of cards. Uncovering fake bank accounts, fake offices and possibly even a fake death, McCrum offers a searing exposé that will finally lay bare the truth.

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 Quest for Good Governance written by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate examination of why international anti-corruption fails to deliver results and how we should understand and build good governance.

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 The Panama Papers written by Frederik Obermaier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting 11.5 million documents sent through encrypted channels. The secret records of 214,000 offshore companies. The largest data leak in history. In early 2015, an anonymous whistle-blower led investigative journalists Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier into the shadow economy where the super-rich hide billions of dollars in complex financial networks. Thus began the ground-breaking investigation that saw an international team of 400 journalists work in secret for a year to uncover cases involving heads of state, politicians, businessmen, big banks, the mafia, diamond miners, art dealers and celebrities. A real-life thriller, The Panama Papers is the gripping account of how the story of the century was exposed to the world.

Download or read book Criminal Capital written by S. Platt and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal Capital is an engaging but authoritative account of how financial structures and products can and are being used to evade proper scrutiny and enable criminal activity and what can be done about it. Based on the analysis of the financial methods that are frequently used by criminals, it deals with the widespread abuse of financial systems.

Download or read book The Last Empire written by Serhii Plokhy and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

Download or read book The Ugly Game written by Heidi Blake and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY THAT BROUGHT DOWN FIFA'S SEPP BLATTER. 'With every page of this book, we see just why FIFA desperately needs a complete overhaul' - Sun When FIFA awarded the tiny desert state of Qatar the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, the news was greeted with disbelief and allegations of corruption. How had a country with almost no football infrastructure or tradition, a high terror risk and searing summer temperatures of 50C beaten more established countries with stronger bids? The story behind the Qatari success soon developed into one of the greatest sporting scandals of our time. And when the Sunday Times Insight team received a cache of hundreds of millions of documents from a whistleblower, the contents of the FIFA Files became a global sensation, unearthing the corruption that lay at the heart of the bidding process. Now in this remarkable new book by the Sunday Times journalists at the centre of the investigation, Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, comes the most comprehensive account yet of what happened and who was involved. Above all, it explains why, despite all the evidence, FIFA continues to support Qatar - even to the extent of publishing an edited and abbreviated report into the process that was immediately denounced by its original author. Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, The Ugly Game is undoubtedly the biggest sporting story of our times. 'Never before has bribe-giving been documented in such graphic detail' - Independent

Download or read book Very Bad People written by Patrick Alley and published by Monoray. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PATRICK ALLEY'S NEW BOOK TERRIBLE HUMANS IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW. ***** 'Reads like a John le Carré novel but is, in fact, very real.' - The Big Issue 'Very Bad People would be a hugely enjoyable thriller if it wasn't all true.' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 'Global Witness are fearless.' - Gordon Roddick, Campaigner and Co-Founder of the Body Shop 'Part true crime tale, part investigative procedural, this is the account of the brilliant and necessary superheroes of Global Witness, whose superpower is the truth.' - Edward Zwick, Director of Blood Diamond 'Very Bad People reads like a non-stop high-speed chase as our fighters against corruption hunt down a litany of criminals and con-men, some on the fringes of our society, some embedded high up within it. It's a great story and an important one.' - David Farr, Screenwriter, The Night Manager 'The story told in this book of three youthful idealists who go from eating cold baked beans in a drafty London flat to the Thai-Cambodian border where they posed as traders in illegally felled timber is simply riveting. Don't miss it.' - Misha Glenny, author of McMafia 'Alley has produced a clear-eyed account of a world poisoned by dark money, and a welcome reminder that resistance is possible. As it turns out, his book is even more timely than he could have hoped.' - Irish Times 'This book is inspirational. It shows how young people with sufficient passion and intelligence have the capacity to go after some of the most powerful governments and corporations and shame, humiliate and just push governments to support important reforms that can make this a more decent world.' - Frank Vogl, Co-Founder of Transparency International Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. Blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. And this is co-founder Patrick Alley's revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes - and the 'shadow network' that enables them. VERY BAD PEOPLE is about following the money, going undercover in the world's most dangerous places, and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super-villains who bear every resemblance to The Night Manager's Richard Roper. One dictator's son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle. As they unravel crooked deals of labyrinthine complexity, the team encounter well-known corporations whose operations are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents help park dirty money in London, New York, or in offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes. Patrick Alley's book is a brilliant, authoritative and fearless investigation into the darkest workings of our world - and an inspiration to all of us who want to fight back.

Download or read book Nazi Billionaires written by David de Jong and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Meticulously researched …compels us to confront the current-day legacy of these Nazi ties.” —Wall Street Journal A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how America allowed them to get away with it. In 1946, Günther Quandt—patriarch of Germany’s most iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW—was arrested for suspected Nazi collaboration. Quandt claimed that he had been forced to join the party by his archrival, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and the courts acquitted him. But Quandt lied. And his heirs, and those of other Nazi billionaires, have only grown wealthier in the generations since, while their reckoning with this dark past remains incomplete at best. Many of them continue to control swaths of the world economy, owning iconic brands whose products blanket the globe. The brutal legacy of the dynasties that dominated Daimler-Benz, cofounded Allianz, and still control Porsche, Volkswagen, and BMW has remained hidden in plain sight—until now. In this landmark work of investigative journalism, David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany’s wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich. Using a wealth of previously untapped sources, de Jong shows how these tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured slave laborers, and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler’s army as Europe burned around them. Most shocking of all, de Jong exposes how America’s political expediency enabled these billionaires to get away with their crimes, covering up a bloodstain that defiles the German and global economy to this day.

Download or read book Kingdom of Characters Pulitzer Prize Finalist written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Download or read book Airhead written by Emily Maitlis and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FEATURING EMILY MAITLIS' GROUNDBREAKING INTERVIEW WITH PRINCE ANDREW The news has never been more prominent - but are we getting the full story? Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis gives us a behind-the-scenes look at some of the biggest news stories and interviews of recent years 'Smart, funny and brilliantly told' Elizabeth Day 'Revelatory, riveting and frequently hilarious' James O'Brien 'Absolutely irresistible' Jeremy Vine ________ In this no holds barred account of life in the seconds before, during and after going on air, Newsnight presenter, leading journalist, and queen of the side eye Emily Maitlis gives us the insider info on what we don't get to see on-screen. Giving us the inside scoop on her interviews with everyone from Emma Thompson to Russell Brand, and Donald Trump to Tony Blair, as well as covering news stories such as President Clinton's affairs, Boris Johnson's race to PM, Grenfell, #MeToo, and that interview with Prince Andrew. Airhead is a brilliant exposé of the moments that never make the news. From News Presenter of the Year and 2020 BAFTA nominee ________ 'Funny and subtly smart' GUARDIAN, BOOKS OF THE YEAR DAILY MAIL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Deliciously funny . . . Irresistible' The Times '[Emily] is so absolutely of the moment' Evening Standard

Download or read book The Finance Curse written by Nicholas Shaxson and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “artfully presented [and] engaging” look at the insidious effects of financialization on our lives and politics by the author of Treasure Islands (The Boston Globe). How didthe banking sector grow from a supporter of business to the biggest business in the world? Financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson takes us on a terrifying journey through the world economy, exposing tax havens, monopolists, megabanks, private equity firms, Eurobond traders, lobbyists, and a menagerie of scoundrels quietly financializing our entire society, hurting both business and individuals. Shaxson shows how we got here, telling the story of how finance re-engineered the global economic order in the last half-century, with the aim not of creating wealth but extracting it from the underlying economy. Under the twin gospels of “national competitiveness” and “shareholder value,” megabanks and financialized corporations have provoked a race to the bottom between states to provide the most subsidized environment for big business, encouraged a brain drain into finance, fostered instability and inequality, and turned a blind eye to the spoils of organized crime. From Ireland to Iowa, he shows the insidious effects of financialization on our politics and on communities who were promised paradise but got poverty wages instead. We need a strong financial system—but when it grows too big it becomes a monster. The Finance Curse is the explosive story of how finance got a stranglehold on society, and reveals how we might release ourselves from its grasp. Revised with new chapters “[Discusses] corrupt financiers in London and New York City, geographically obscure tax havens, the bizarre realm of wealth managers in South Dakota, a ravaged newspaper in New Jersey, and a shattered farm economy in Iowa . . . A vivid demonstration of how corruption and greed have become the main organizing principles in the finance industry.” —Kirkus Reviews