Kleptocracy: The Theft of Nations
Kleptocracy: The Theft of Nations

Author: Samuel James

Publisher: Dr. Samuel Inbaraja S

Published: 2024-03-16

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13:

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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.

American Kleptocracy
American Kleptocracy

Author: Casey Michel

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1250274532

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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.

Putin's Kleptocracy
Putin's Kleptocracy

Author: Karen Dawisha

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-09-22

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1476795207

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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.”

Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security

Author: Sarah Chayes

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-01-19

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0393246531

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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.

Corruption and Money Laundering
Corruption and Money Laundering

Author: D. Chaikin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-06-22

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0230622453

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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.

The Enablers
The Enablers

Author: Frank Vogl

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1538162830

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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.

Kleptopia
Kleptopia

Author: Tom Burgis

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0063236133

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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.

The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management
The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management

Author: J. C. Sharman

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1501708430

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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.

Moneyland
Moneyland

Author: Oliver Bullough

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2018-09-06

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1782833331

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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.

The Puppet Masters
The Puppet Masters

Author: Emile van der Does de Willebois

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0821388967

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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.