Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis (review)

[...]at its heart, this is a story about how rampant official corruption in one former Soviet republic—Kazakhstan—is made possible by a fabulously well-paid global network of lawyers, bankers, ex-spooks, politicians, and public-relations executives, who are all too happy to launder reputations and money. What was most outrageous about dos Santos’s avarice, beyond the brazenness of her money grabs, was the global network of law firms, PR shops, and consulting companies falling over themselves to help her. To be certain, the United States, with its secretive limited-liability companies that Russian mobsters use to anonymously buy Manhattan apartments, does play a big role, especially as the book draws to a conclusion and the ties of the drama’s shady cast of characters to President Donald Trump come to light. The crooked Swiss bank that once employed Burgis’s main protagonist, the late Nigel Wilkins, benefited from a report it commissioned from BCG that showed it “how to find and serve clients including oligarchs and ‘federal and municipal functionaries, officers in the military, security organs etc.’ who are ‘highly dependent on [a] personal political network,’ and who demand ‘high confidentiality. . . . in order to prevent negative publicity and avoid pressure’” (p. 138).