66. Casey Michel on the American support for kleptocracies across the globe

KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast

We welcome Casey Michelle, journalist and author of American Kleptocracy: How the US Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. 00:56: Casey’s background and what let his interest in illicit finance, money laundering and kleptocracy 01:30: Casey discusses living in Kazakhstan as a school teacher and the country’s ex-president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s corrupt government that sparked his interest in the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursultan_Nazarbayev#Allegations_of_corruption) 04:40: Matthew and Casey focus in on the provocative title of Casey’s book and what it suggests 06:21: The reason why Casey wrote his book 07:40: The three primary dynamics that created American offshore Kleptocracy as a source of income (the role of U.S. states, the treasury’s policy exceptions, and American enablers profiting from the financial flows) 15:36: Why the U.S. is Casey’s focus and how it compares to offshore havens for kleptocratic money 21:54: Taking the FinCEN files (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54226107) as an example of the scale of ignored suspicious activity reports 29:27: The role of American lawyers and law firms in illicit wealth 36:35: Casey highlights the recent movements in Congress to prevent enablers 39:30: The role of universities and their acceptance of donations from kleptocratic figures. Casey brings in the National Endowment for Democracy May 2021 report on reputation laundering (https://www.ned.org/reputation-laundering-in-the-university-sector-of-open-societies-working-paper/) 50:15: The long-term development of kleptocracy and money laundering, and honing in on the Trump organization 56:49: Money laundering as a partisan issue under the Trump organization 1:04:14: Casey thinks ahead about what we ought to strive for in this space