Mark Galeotti’s timely account of the Russian underworld – The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia – charts its rise from Soviet-era gangsters to Kremlin collaborators under Vladimir Putin, notes analyst Oliver… Read more »
Hungary is no longer a democracy, says Nóra Köves, an activist with the pro-democracy Eötvös Károly Institute. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Not, I think, any more. We are heading to… Read more »
The poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British territory—an act that could only have been carried out by Moscow—has set off a chain of diplomatic expulsions and counter-expulsions… Read more »
It is often said that Russia is a competitor to western democracy. But that is misleading. Its regime is a model only to other budding kleptocrats, the FT’s Edward Luce… Read more »
One of the world’s most notorious kleptocracies is in the news again. The son of José Eduardo dos Santos, the former Angolan president, has been named as a suspect in… Read more »
A regime officially opposed to corruption is prosecuting a prominent investigative journalist with a track record of exposing malfeasance. The head of Angola’s state-owned oil business has given first… Read more »
In 2013, a whistleblower informed Denmark’s largest bank that members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s family, and a group of accused money launderers, were using the bank’s branch in Estonia… Read more »
By pumping so much money through the hands of Ukrainian officials and businessmen — often the same people — the surge in military spending has held back efforts to… Read more »
In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars studying postcolonial states began increasingly to focus on corruption as an impediment to prosperity, notes journalist Oliver Bullough, the author of The Last Man… Read more »
Ukraine’s civil society protesters are pushing for a “move from kleptocracy to democracy,” AP reports. If you ever want to feel inspired about what the United States is doing to combat kleptocracy –… Read more »