Kleptoscope – What are Trump and Covid doing to the fight against corruption?

Trump and COVID-19 are drawing new battle lines on the global war against corruption, making it harder than ever to trace or hold accountable individuals or state for their behaviours.

As the United States has withdrawn from being a world policing force in many areas and adopted a new, more isolationist, international policy, we start to see the effects of this American abdication across the globe, from Guatemala, Ukraine, as well as in the United States itself.

The pandemic is becoming the perfect breading ground for fraudsters and kleptocrats to come out of the woodworks with unprecedented and hence unregulated opportunities, much of this money flowing through London.

In this latest “Kleptoscope, journalist Oliver Bullough is joined by some of the world’s leading experts in the politics and mechanics of corruption, to discuss how the twin threats of Trump and COVID-19 are undermining years of progress, and what we can do about it.

 

Moderator: Oliver Bullough

Speakers:

Sarah Chayes is one of the world’s most original thinkers about corruption, having gone from working as a journalist for National Public Radio, to running a soap factory in Kandahar, to advising the most senior US officers in Afghanistan. Her latest book Everybody Knows is published in August.

Helena Wood worked for the National Crime Agency and the Treasury, before becoming a financial crime consultant and Associate Fellow at the Whitehall think tank RUSI.

Daria Kaleniuk is executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Centre, and one of the country’s most renowned activists. She has helped push through several major anti-corruption initiatives.