Category: KLEPTOCRACY

‘Kleptocratic conspiracy’ pushing Guatemala toward authoritarianism

     

Hundreds of peasant farmers and indigenous Maya blocked a major highway in Guatemala’s western highlands on Monday, demanding that President Jimmy Morales reverse a policy aimed at forcing a U.N.-backed… Read more »

Smart sanctions should target Kremlin kleptocrats

     

More than 1,000 people were detained at anti-corruption protests across Russia on Monday, AP reports: The OVD-Info group, which tracks police detentions and posts the names of the detainees on… Read more »

How Western ‘enablers’ import corruption and strengthen authoritarianism

     

Certain elements within the legal, financial, and influence communities, seeking new markets, clients, and profits among an emerging global class of super wealthy actors with fortunes of dubious provenance, have… Read more »

‘Kleptocracy Curse’ undermines democracy, threatens global security

     

Federal investigators in Brazil have uncovered corruption at the highest levels of the government and in the country’s largest corporations, according to a Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder by Claire Felter and Rocio Cara… Read more »

South Africa’s civil society halted kleptocratic state capture

     

South Africa’s fragile democracy was protected from kleptocratic state capture by the “galvanizing action” of a vibrant coalition of civil society groups, including organized labor, say the authors of a… Read more »

Russian hackers target sites exposing Kremlin kleptocracy

     

Hackers linked to Russia’s government tried to target the websites of two U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, according to Microsoft, Reuters… Read more »

Why the West must confront Putin

     

Recent events have only strengthened hedge-fund manager Bill Browder’s case against the Kremlin, a prominent Moscow-based journalist writes. In order to advance the now-celebrated Magnitsky Act, Browder approached the Helsinki… Read more »

Can Romania recapitalize trust in democracy?

     

Fifty years on from the crushing of the Prague Spring and almost 30 years after the 1989 revolutionary upheaval, Eastern Europe is experiencing a vicious return to authoritarianism, according to… Read more »

Corruption the ‘soft spot’ of post-Cold War authoritarians

     

The corruption of mafia-like elite circles are the soft spot of post-Cold War authoritarian states, argues AEI analyst Clay R. Fuller. “All authoritarian states are kleptocracies because by definition, authoritarians maintain an artificial monopoly on… Read more »

West’s Iron Curtain ‘would be most effective tool against Putin’s kleptocracy’

     

There is a major difference between former Soviet leaders and senior Russian officials today, including Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov, whose families are abroad, former… Read more »