Bribe, Swindle Or Steal

Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa joins the podcast to talk about corruption, disinformation and how to stand up to a dictator.   This podcast was originally published on February 22, 2023.

Dr. Magnus Ohman of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) joins the podcast to discuss how corruption undermines free and fair elections. He discusses his recent publication "Vote for Free: A Global Guide for Citizen Monitoring of Campaign Finance," which provides an eight-step model for civil society organizations seeking to monitor campaign finance.   This episode was originally published on 30 November 2022.

As Syria struggles to get on its feet after decades under the tyrannical father-son Assad regime, we're revisiting a story from 2024 when those desperate to leave Syria were preyed upon by a human smuggling ring. The story was brought to light by Mahmoud Elsobky, one of the two winners of the 2024 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting. Originally posted on Jul. 10, 2024

We are revisiting an episode from 2020 with David Shimer. David discusses his book that reviews the century of covert election interference by Russia and the U.S., the known impact of Russian meddling in 2016, and their growing capacity to interfere in future elections.   This episode was originally published on 22 September 2020.  

This week, we hear from Leonid Volkov who spoke at the recent TRACE London Forum. Leonid is Alexei Navalny's Chief of Staff and Political Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. He discusses the role of corruption in Putin's Russia as well as the impact of sanctions and the toll that rampant corruption is taking on Russia. Posted in Oct. 5, 2022    

This podcast is based on TRACE's recent Year in Review webinar with Kate Atkinson. Kate is a Member and the Chair of Miller & Chevalier, based in their DC office, and she reviews for us the FCPA highlights for 2024.

We’re reposting our 2017 podcast with Adam Davidson of the New Yorker who joined the podcast to talk about his research into the baffling Trump Hotel deal in Baku. This episode was originally published on 14 June 2017.

In light of last week’s inauguration, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast episode with Dan Alexander, author and senior editor at Forbes, discussing his book about Trump’s business deals with foreign entities, including one very strange deal with the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. This episode was originally published on 7 October 2020.

This inauguration week, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast on President Trump's assault on the civil service. In this episode, Harvard law professor, Matthew Stephenson, provides some context for understanding Trump's executive order on the civil service and then lists the three primary threats it poses for corruption. A more detailed discussion can be found on his Global Anticorruption Blog.

Our guest today, Dr. Rebecca Connolly, joins us to discuss her work on the legal governance of outer space relating to militarization, security and commercialization, drawing some interesting parallels to the law of the sea and making it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Karina Litvack joins the podcast to share her insights into climate governance based on her extensive board experience in the oil and gas sector and her role as the Founding Chair of the Climate Governance Initiative. 

As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan’s audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire.   This episode was originally published on 20 December 2017.

Patrick Gushue, the Department of Justice’s Acting Director of its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, joins the podcast to discuss the program, uptake to date, who is eligible and key considerations as to timing and whistleblower involvement in the misconduct.  More information about the pilot program is available at justice.gov/corporatewhistleblower

Omar Alshogre, refugee, public speaker, and project manager with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, shares the wrenching story of his three years as a political prisoner in the worst of Syria’s prisons. He discusses the role that extortion plays there, simultaneously delegitimizing the regime further and propping it up financially.   Episode resources:  Mentioned at (00:33): The Syrian Emergency Task Force Mentioned at (00:45): Omar's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 11 March 2020   This episode was originally published on 9 June 2021.

With the holiday travel season approaching, we’re revisiting a podcast episode featuring Paul Radu, the co-founder and co-executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Paul describes his team’s work in uncovering an international team of cash machine skimmers that ultimately skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars, largely from tourist hot spots. Travelers often don’t realize their accounts are being drained until after they return home. This episode was originally published on 9 June 2020.

Walt Pavlo went to work at MCI at a time when telecoms were hungry for go-getters. It was the early 2000s, and Walt enjoyed the freedom and aggressive nature of a recently deregulated industry. But soon he realized that MCI’s most lucrative customers were also its flakiest, and the pressure was on to manage millions of bad debt that accumulated on the books. In this episode, Walt explains how he concocted a fake-loan scheme that netted him money far beyond his dreams — and yet how hollow it felt, right up until the moment it all came crashing down.  Walt Pavlo is a nationally recognized speaker who writes for Forbes and NYU Law School on white-collar crime and criminal justice. He founded the firm Prisonology in 2014 as a consulting firm to support federal criminal defense attorneys by providing experts who have retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He is the co-author of “Stolen Without a Gun: Confessions from Inside History's Biggest Accounting Fraud, the Collapse of MCI WorldCom,” which covers his st

Retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell joins the podcast to describe the review he was commissioned to undertake of Hockey Canada’s organizational structure in the aftermath of a sexual assault scandal that shook confidence in the sport in 2018.

In his mid-20s, Chuck Collins made a fateful choice. The great-grandson of Oscar Meyer, and thus an heir to part of the meatpacker’s family fortune, Chuck was skeptical of the riches (some $500,000 in 1986 dollars). He didn’t want to perpetuate the imbalances he saw dynastic wealth creating in society. Rather than live off the interest, or to give a portion to charity, Chuck gave away the entire inheritance, and thus embarked on a most unusual sort of normal life. In this episode, Chuck explains what reverberations his decision to give away his inheritance had on his family and in his career, and he lays out his case to other similarly privileged Americans: Why life is better without the insulation that great wealth provides, and how billionaires can rejoin American life. Chuck Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he edits Inequality.org. He is also a founding member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of high-net-worth Americans wh

The sudden ascent of Mohammed bin Salman from an obscure royal heir to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia — the country’s de facto ruler — has fascinated Jonathan Rugman, an author and longtime correspondent in the Middle East. Jonathan’s latest BBC documentary, “The Kingdom,” traces MBS’s life from an unruly youth to a series of Machiavellian maneuvers to cut ahead of cousins and uncles in the line of royal succession. Jonathan’s reporting illuminates a brash but secretive young autocrat whose wealth and power have few equals anywhere on the planet. After years of high-profile murder, jailings, and crackdowns, a formidable question remains: What more does MBS want? Jonathan Rugman is a Visiting Lecturer in the journalism department at City, University of London, who has reported from some 50 countries during his 30-year journalism career. He is the author of “Ataturk’s Children – Turkey and the Kurds” and “The Killing in the Consulate,” in which he investigated the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashogg

For more than 20 years, Paul Schervish surveyed many of the richest people in America for a long-running study on how the wealthy view the world and themselves. In this episode, another in our series on extreme wealth, Paul explains how his research and his early years spent as a priest inform his understanding of wealth and its potential to improve the world. Applying sociological and religious scholarship to the question of how what to do with money — and by extension, what to do with the rich — he invites haves and have-nots alike to consider the roles that God, human agency, and spiritual fulfillment play in our material lives. Paul Schervish is a former Jesuit priest and a professor emeritus at Boston College, where he directed the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. A prolific scholar and author, his books include “The Structural Determinants of Unemployment,” “Wealth in Western Thought: The Case for and Against Riches,” “Gospels of Wealth: How the Rich Portray their Lives,” and “The Will of God and Weal