Cloptopia
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Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World Hardcover – September 8, 2020
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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Publisher
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Harper (September 8, 2020) Language
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English Hardcover
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464 pages ISBN-10
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0062883658 ISBN-13
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978-0062883650 Item Weight
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1.35 pounds Dimensions
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6 x 1.41 x 9 inches
4.4 out of 5 stars
1,597 ratings
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Please read this book. It is very important. It is only one of several recent accounts of the global mafia, but this is a critical battle that is not getting much attention in general media. The recent release of the FinCen reports, almost lost in the news clutter, only increases the book’s relevancy. Financial crimes are not as sexy as most other scandals, and their pursuit requires dogged, detail-obsessed sleuthing. More reason to thank Tom Burgis. While most of the book describes a titanic, global gang war between Kazakh and Russian swindlers, it reaches from Zimbabwe to Arabia and has much general to say about the mostly hidden war between Rule-of-Law and mafia states. Yes, Burgis jumps around a lot and he drops a lot of foreign names, but he ties it all together in the end. It is only in the last chapters that he touches on the GRU’s favorite American and how he was picked and propped up by Russian middlemen as far back as 2001. Much of that chapter is fairly well known, but it is also here that Burgis makes the more general observations that we had better pay attention to. The global kleptocracy is the dark side of globalization. The once-triumph of democracy has turned into a death spiral at the hands of mafia states and their international networks. Burgis calls it “five families” the Nats, the Sprooks, the Party (Chinese), the Brits and the Petros (mostly Arab mafia states). The sprooks are an interesting amalgam of spooks and crooks from KGB siloviki to nihilistic Western intel pros out to make a few million in retirement. The Brits are an odd case: total sell-outs according to Burgis, replacing old empire with a new one as a bolthole for gangsters and their money, as evidenced by the leak that “whatever we do” to protest Russian invasions, “don’t stop the flow of Russian money into the City.” I think the taxonomy can be simplified to the New (not just Red) Mafia and their Western Quislings. It is disturbing to read of Tony Blair’s work for dictators (he could have mentioned Herr Schroeder’s as well). In the US, we have a whole crap-pile of scheming operators feeding at foreign troughs – Burgis skims the top names. The Nats (nationalist demagogues) deserve some general observations. They are everywhere now, making our age seem like a replay of the 1930s. But there are important differences. The totalitarians of yore were idealists. That was their downfall. The new class of dictators are psychopathic criminals who use nationalism, and religion, as tools for power. The “nats” are true globalists: they support and finance each other across borders, run massive global internet subversions, etc. Burgis says it’s not the ideology that matters, but how it is used. It’s the old story: The Traitor wraps himself in the flag. The Devil holds up the Bible. The Thief calls for Law and Order. Hell, it works. I’m told that not one Chinese, least of all Xi, for one moment believes in Marxism-Leninism. There are left-wing and right-wing kleptocracies. As Castro apocryphally said, “They say socialism doesn’t work. Sure worked for me.” Same with our own crop: Pray2Jesus, Vote4Satan. So these mind-viruses (inc. the new conspiracy theories) actually function as Potemkin villages concealing agendas of power. That’s how humans operate. Burgis spotted this when he wrote that the real battle is not between systems, not between left and right; it is actually between the straight and the crooked. (This is a variant of “it’s not the system, it’s the culture.”) Well, the straight are losing in this new media universe. We have not developed the immune system to deal with the assault via the Internet. Billions are stolen with a mouse click. Entire countries are impoverished, duped, and enslaved by scheming billionaires – often government leaders. Other micro-states have become, well, pirate harbors again. Strangely, many of them fly the British flag, not the Jolly Roger. Here's another Burgis insight. Why do Rule-of-Law states tolerate it, the British in particular? It’s actually a new, subtle form of colonialism. Unlike their totalitarian antecessors, today’s kleptocrats have no alternate vision for society. They are entirely parasitic. The money they steal winds up in London, in New York, in Vancouver, places people actually want to be, and that actually produce something. The same with petrodollars. Keep it coming, says the West. Don’t look too carefully in the horse’s mouth. Take the billions oil companies pay the top cannibal in, say, Rio Muni. It doesn’t go into the jungle. It’s in Malibu estates or New York condos. Burgis says the Trump Towers and other real estate deals are ways for ex-Soviet billionaires to launder money – and to support agents of influence. Real estate is a gigantic hole in the financial defense lines. Invisible persons can swiftly transfer billions across borders through real estate. As Burgis admits, the US used to be the world’s financial conscience: the alphabet agencies were after global bank secrecy, tax evasion, and other skullduggery to an extent never dared by the UK or Europe. And here we get to another insight: the parasitic global criminals may be more cunning and patient than the fuhrers and duces a century ago, but they can’t thrive without the West. That’s why the ex-Soviet kleptocrats are beside themselves with rage at the Magnitsky Act. It really cramps their style. That’s how to hit them. Block their trade, cork their pipelines, blacklist their passports, freeze their assets. Another insight on ideologies: As Burgis said, in the 80s and 90s the financial sector, especially in US-UK, adopted libertarian and laissez-faire doctrines to legitimize its aims. That went off the rails real fast. Friedman and Rand never intended their rational observations to exculpate criminals. Friedman said corporations exist to make money. That’s a tautology like saying hammers exist to drive nails – it doesn’t mean everything is a nail. Adam Smith’s self-interested bakers and butchers weren’t supposed to swindle the villagers and pack off to the Cayman Islands. But that’s how ideology is used. Special case: Cryptocurrencies. Invented by libertarian idealists to shield from government predation. But who uses bitcoin? Monsters. What to do? Burgis has little if anything to say about that. We could begin by doubling the budgets of the alphabet agencies’ financial forensics. Supercharge the Magnitsky-like legislation globally. But little changes until we realize that we are in a world war about the soul of civilization, and as in the 30s the bad guys are winning. To our agents of justice, it must feel like plowing the sea. Unfortunately we can’t just kill these folks, overthrow their states, return the money. But that’s what they do – numerous mafia states now routinely run global assassination campaigns. We only hear the top names. Burgis mentions horrific cases in the US you never heard of. Ironic that we can always spare a Hellfire missile for some two-bit terrorist in a far-off desert, but those who do a thousand times the damage we court for their money. Actually, Burgis’s book is full of true heroes: honest lawyers, fearless reporters, bureaucrats who suddenly grow a conscience, ordinary folks who yell stop, or leak, as in the Panama Papers and the Bank revelations. They do tend do die, though. The system hates people like that. Final insight (not Burgis’s): Retribution is not enough. There is no substitute for Redistribution. The big problem is that the line between illegality and just screw-over business is fluid and subject to legal manipulations, yet the results are the same: schemers enslave producers. Even if no law is actually broken, unimpeded we could still wind up all slaves of the trickster with the fastest computer or the most devious lawyers. Inequality has run amok; and while we may not begrudge people like Buffett their fortunes, it is more necessary to claw back across the board than to jail the individual Madoffs. There is a Venn overlap between business, government, and thievery. At least even out the odds. Thanks Burgis! Your book is just one biopsy of the tumor. Keep going.
An incredibly hard read. But Kleptocracy adds some insights, albeit in a long, complex story mostly involving Kazakhstan. It names Felix Sater, ex or maybe still mafia and money launderer, CIA informer, as the one who built all those hotels to launder money and put Trumps name on them. He didn’t care if they eventually lost money, they enabled masssive laundering with the initial purchases. So Trump’s real occupation is money launderer. The book also paints the role of factual distortions in the whole business. If you’ve basically stolen a copper mine or gas drilling operation from the people, you make up a story on how it was a good deed. That fiction is eventually rebutted by the next keleptocrat who paints you as an embezzler, maybe throws you in jail and tortures you, to steal the golden egg from you; any truth is so far gone, it barely matters. Sound familiar? The final insight is the woeful state of banking in the UK and it’s former colonies, aiding hidden accounts and vast money laundering. With regulators looking the other way. If anyone can read Kleptocracy and follow the story, with the names, countries and stories weaving in and out, you are a better person than I. I eventually gave up on who’s who and just absorbed the stories. I still favor House of Trump, House of Putin on the subject. And that book is readable.
Financial scams and evasions are complicated. Writing about them in a cogent fashion (or prosecuting them to a jury of peers) is even more complex. I have yet to see a good explanation of a CDO that made all that much sense without a book or three on current financial instruments. And even then it is like, "why do they do that?" As well, there are a lot of characters with foreign names appearing at different times in multiple countries. And the timeline necessarily jumps around, so reading this book almost takes a notepad to keep it all organized. This is a book you will have to read two or three times to really get it all. Well, unless you got Gladwell's explanation of a CDO in the first go, then you are good. The chapters end fairly abruptly. A chapter synopsis of 'these are the takeaways' would have been nice. The final chapter is pretty freely written, but fails to really pull in the big lessons. No discussions of the larger concepts. For example, the author notes that the main villain corporation ENRC sued to get a British common law overturned. Outrageous! I mean, I guess. Maybe if I was a Brit I would be more informed and upset about common law. Perhaps some explanation of what this was and why it was important. Perhaps some explanation of future ramifications? Nope. You are on your own. As well, a more thorough telling of U.S. and UK tax and financial and criminal laws would have added a lot of context as to how these financial 'crimes/trades' are very difficult to prosecute. For example, tax evasion is illegal while tax avoidance is legal, but looks the same on paper and to a jury; putting your EU profits in the Isle of Mann, which charges no tax is legal (but really fishy, I mean how does an mostly abandoned oil rig in the North Sea house a couple billion Euros?). Not paying VAT is illegal. As well, just being a relative of a gangster does not make one a criminal in the eyes of Law Enforcement. Ilyas working with Slater doesn't make either of them criminals. Nor does working with the Trio make McCormick a criminal. The author seems to take the opposite view (and with perhaps good reason). As well, Williams finding that Abyazov hiding bank profits with shell companies and front men/women looks pretty darn illegal. Yet Burgis seems equally convinced our protagonist is a dissident hero and that Williams just doesn't understand how one survives in a Kleptocratic regime. .. . Being a Kleptocrat. Williams has a pretty solid understanding to me. Spoilers that should have been covered in a good synopsis: 1. Big takeaway is that West wants dirty cash and money laundering as infuses our financial systems with billions, if not trillions of dollars and sky high commissions. 2. Financial oversight is, as others have pointed out, not terribly interested in compliance or collecting taxes on this money for two reasons. First, everyone wants to leave 5 figure gov salary to move over into stock market and make six or seven figure salary a 5 in front. Second, structurally, small government agencies used to have 'unlimited resources' and are now finding themselves vastly outspent by organized crime and dark money. For example, the Financial Control Office (or whatever) can investigate, but cannot cope with half a billion spent by ENRC on surveillance, espionage, cyber-warfare, and propaganda. Spend enough 'legitimate money' and eventually the politicians will shut down an investigation or find a way to make illegal behavior legal. Third, see point one. Staunching the flow of dark money into Brexit London would probably make the self induced financial wound of Brexit a full blown economic meltdown of the UK financial industry. Poor resume material that. Unless you are hedge fund manager. 3. Previously I had thought most 'dark money' moved through 'black hole' banks such as Lebanon, Israel, Navorro, etc. . . It turns out those are for the ametuers. The real money is in getting a corrupt organization onto the London or NY Stock Exchanges and then having hedge funds clean billions of dollars a year for Russian, African, and Middle Eastern organized crime while 'defensively investigating' potential corruption with mainly corrupt/compromised individuals. This money, while largely untaxed, bolsters U.S. and UK stock markets, luxury good, real estate, etc. . . A large portion of that money gets spent in Western countries; the incentive to track down dark money is negligible. 4. Already stated, but Dark Money can now outspend previously limitless power/money of government.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Important subject, unreadable book
I was disappointed with this book. I'd heard a podcast interview with Tom Burgis, where he was clear, lively, succinct and informative. This interview prompted me to buy his book to find out more about the subject of the interview. His writing style is completely unlike his speaking style. I found the book impossible to read. It is neither clear enough nor well written enough to read like a novel. Yet its narrative format is maddening if I try to read it as a text book. It jumps around, with flashbacks and parallel story lines, and a huge cast of characters, some of whom are known by more than one name. I found it very hard to work out what was going on. No doubt this reflects the reality of the author's research, but it makes for a trying read. It would be much better if he simply told us what he has discovered: explain what money is flowing, from where to where, who is involved, what the effect is and why it's bad. Then we could u
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