- 5 days ago
Power, greed, and billions in stolen wealth... Join us as we count down the leaders who shamelessly exploited their nations for personal gain! From private zoos and pirate ships to palaces in the jungle, these rulers wrote the book on corruption while their citizens suffered in poverty.
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, where we'll be discussing the 10 most fraudulent politicians to ever rule.
00:1210. Silvio Berlusconi
00:14Italy's most controversial prime minister since Mussolini has debatedly been Berlusconi.
00:25He's held the role three separate times since the 90s.
00:28Berlusconi was absurdly wealthy, making billions as a media tycoon.
00:32Before dying in 2023, he was put on trial multiple times.
00:36In 2012, he was found guilty of tax fraud in the 90s, which got him a four-year prison sentence.
00:42A court in Milan ruled that the 76-year-old used offshore companies to avoid taxes on the purchase of American film rights.
00:50This was reduced to one, then reduced to community service due to his age.
00:54His most publicized trial was focused on an inappropriate relationship of his, which got him a seven-year sentence, which was overturned on appeal.
01:03This is just barely scratching the surface of all the illegal deeds he was accused of.
01:08When a man is a character, he is always on stage.
01:12He has fans and detractors.
01:14He has people cheering for him and people hating him.
01:17In Ukraine, corruption has been a huge issue since the fall of communism in 1991.
01:25Authorities in Ukraine have opened a murder case against former president Leonid Kushma over his alleged links to the beheading of an opposition journalist.
01:35Recent years have seen improvements, but it continues to be a challenge.
01:39One of the biggest exploiters was Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected president in 2010, then ousted during a revolution in 2014.
01:48He's now fled Kiev, we believe, for his stronghold in eastern Ukraine.
01:53After he fled, they discovered a private zoo and a pirate ship restaurant in his mansion, among other ridiculously expensive indulgences.
02:01He and his associates are believed to have stolen almost 37 billion dollars in total, an obscene amount.
02:09Ukraine has had a warrant for his arrest since 2014, but he's currently hiding in Russia.
02:14Ukraine is going to seek extradition from Russia of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and other persons suspected of organizing the shooting of protesters in the Independence Square in 2014.
02:25Number 8.
02:26Bashar al-Assad
02:27If an award existed for the most evil eye doctor in history, it would instantly be given to al-Assad.
02:34Syrians hoped Bashar, trained as a doctor in London, would reform and modernize the country.
02:40His father, Hafez al-Assad, was Syria's dictator from 1971 until he died in 2000.
02:46His son, Bashar, had been training in ophthalmology, but abandoned this in the 1990s.
02:52When his father died, he took control and held it until 2024.
02:55He came with an image of perhaps a softer, more civilian, more, perhaps even more westernized person.
03:02He did not prove to be so, or he proved to have another aspect to him.
03:07While he was in power, he ruled with an iron fist, frequently abusing human rights, which led to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
03:15The U.S., Turkey, and others sided with the opposition pretty much from the start.
03:21The Syrian president had allies too.
03:23Russian warplanes bombed from the air, and militias backed by Iran fought on the ground.
03:29Countless war crimes were committed to keep him in power, until he was finally ousted and fled to Russia in 2024.
03:36This marked the end of 53 years of despicable al-Assad rule in Syria.
03:427. Kim Jong-un
03:44North Korea is often cited as the most corrupt country in the world.
03:48It's hardly surprising for a country where Kim Il-sung, a man who died in 1994, is considered their eternal president, therefore making it a necrocracy.
03:59A dramatic fireworks extravaganza in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, marks the 99th birthday of the nation's founding leader, Kim Il-sung.
04:0917 years after his death, the late leader remains North Korea's eternal president.
04:14They are one of the strictest countries ever formed.
04:17This has created a society where if you stick to the rules, you'll probably starve to death.
04:22Once a week, whole villages are required to attend meetings glorifying the leader.
04:26In reality, these harsh rules are often bypassed through bribes.
04:37Hence, corruption is necessary to survive.
04:39Like his father and grandfather before him, Kim Jong-un ordered the obligatory purges to legitimize his ascension.
04:47It's also been virtually impossible to escape to another country since 2020, making the captive citizen situation beyond sorrowful.
04:556. Robert Mugabe
04:57In his younger years, Mugabe was considered a freedom fighter and a heroic Zimbabwean revolutionary.
05:03When he was born, Zimbabwe was still under British rule.
05:07We started the war in order to get our country, and we haven't got our country.
05:13Mugabe was one of many who fought for independence, then became their second president in 1987, but held the position until 2017.
05:21His rule brought with it huge amounts of corruption and countless human rights abuses.
05:26For example, in 2000, he bizarrely won a lottery organized by the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation.
05:42From 2000 onwards, he encouraged native Zimbabweans to violently take white-owned farms.
05:47A series of rallies targeting youths began in Marondera, where Mugabe said he would remove all remaining white farmers and hand their land to landless Zimbabweans.
05:58Despite his issues, he was re-elected multiple times, but violence and fraud were highly common, so it wasn't necessarily representative of the people's desires.
06:08In truth, he leaves a battered country still hoping that democracy may flourish once more.
06:14A return to a democracy whose values he trampled, whose rewards he squandered, and whose people he ported.
06:21Number 5. Vladimir Putin.
06:23Under Putin's reign, Russia has become one of the world's most corrupt nations.
06:27Well, of course there has always been corruption in Russia, but building it into such a meticulous system was something only Mr. Putin has managed to do.
06:35Not only that, Putin uses his power as a weapon to destabilize other countries, such as Ukraine.
06:40Some experts say around 6% of Russia's annual GDP is lost to corruption, and some say it is much more.
06:47Putin's greatest fear is that the Russians will realize that his modernization project has failed.
06:53He came into power promising to make Russia into a modern Western country, and it's still basically a corrupt backward country.
07:00The people who have to make up the difference are average, working-class Russians, which leads to a huge rise in wealth inequality.
07:07Reports found that the country's wealthiest 1% own over 50% of Russia's wealth, a mind-blowing figure.
07:15All investments, all projects of Rosenvest were only implemented if Putin said yes to it.
07:20Unfortunately, Putin puts a lot of money into propaganda, meaning Russians aren't as outraged about corruption as they should be.
07:33If they do speak up, they could be sentenced to prison, making the situation even more tragic.
07:38If you could speak to President Putin now, what would you say?
07:41Please stop the war now.
07:43We are not enemies.
07:46We are not enemies.
07:47Number 4.
07:48Sani Abacha.
07:49Nigeria was a military dictatorship between 1993 and 1998, with Sani Abacha pulling all the strings.
07:57Abacha, eva de enigma, plead discards with calculated precision.
08:01He created one of the most disgusting regimes in human history, causing widespread violence to eradicate opponents.
08:07Acts like executing environmental activists destroyed Nigeria's international relations.
08:12Under the present circumstances, the survival of our beloved country is far above any other consideration.
08:20Despite only being in power for 5 years, he managed to embezzle between 2 and 5 billion US dollars.
08:27In the end, he died in suspicious circumstances.
08:30Officially, it was a heart attack, but no autopsy was performed, so people theorize he was poisoned.
08:35Years after his death, they were still finding millions of dollars that he had stolen, then hidden abroad.
08:41I can simply tell you what's being reported, and it's reported that somewhere between 3 to 5 billion dollars were siphoned off by General Abacha.
08:52Number 3.
08:53Mabutu Sese Seko.
08:54Now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was called Zaire after Mabutu became the sole president in 1971,
09:02a position he didn't leave until 1997, when rebels finally ousted him.
09:06This was the home of the man who ruled the Congo for more than 30 years, President Mabutu Sese Seko.
09:13He used his power to exploit his country for as much money as he could.
09:17Estimates of how much he embezzled vary significantly, but some estimate he stole 5 billion dollars.
09:24He transformed himself into a classic African dictator.
09:28Political opponents and rivals were killed or tortured.
09:30In 1970, it is claimed, he stole 60% of the national budget.
09:36Mabutu used this money to build three palaces for himself as part of his extravagant remaking of his hometown.
09:43This was Gabudelite, which was intended to be a jungle paradise.
09:47In 1997, the place was raided by rebels and the palaces were abandoned.
09:51The money just dried up.
09:53This distant town on the edge of the country owed its privileged position to one man.
09:57And he'd gone.
09:58Number 2.
10:00Ferdinand Marcos
10:01Between 1965 and 1986, the Philippines was ruled by an authoritarian leader, Ferdinand Marcos.
10:08He won on the slogan, this country can be great again.
10:13During his rule, the Marcos family acquired obscene quantities of money.
10:17There's no definitive figure for how much, but one economist says it could be as high as 30 billion dollars.
10:23Of course, this wasn't acquired through ethical means or he wouldn't be on our list.
10:28He really cleaned out the treasury, just to make sure that he would be, he would win the election.
10:35By the time he was ousted in 1986, the country was suffering from immense poverty, alongside a major debt crisis.
10:42We were overextended on our loans, we couldn't pay.
10:45Markets were going all over Asia trying to borrow money.
10:47He encouraged political violence, which led to the People Power Revolution in 1986.
10:53Marcos fled to Hawaii, taking with him 717 million dollars of stolen cash.
10:58He lived a lavish lifestyle in Hawaii until dying in 1989, never once facing justice.
11:04He began to believe in his own propaganda.
11:09This is a danger when you stay there too long.
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11:251. Suharto
11:29Indonesia's second-ever president was Suharto, who seized power from the first president, Sukarno, in 1967.
11:38Suharto was born a humble peasant boy to a minor village official in the heart of Java.
11:42He ruled until 1998, when the country had finally gotten sick of his authoritarian regime.
11:48According to Time magazine, his family had amassed 73 billion dollars in wealth during his 32-year rule.
11:55Because of him, at least 500,000 people were murdered in Indonesian mass killings in the 60s.
12:02Before the reform was so high, they buried them up there.
12:05Justice was never delivered to Suharto, who was surprisingly still admired by millions of Indonesians after resigning.
12:12When he finally kicked the bucket in 2008, Indonesia gave him an extravagant funeral alongside a week of national mourning.
12:19This shows how divisive Indonesian opinions of him are, with many regarding him as a hero,
12:23many others considering him a monster.
12:26They refuse to, even at this, in this late day, they refuse to recognize that Suharto is bad.
12:35Did we forget to include any politicians who you believe deserve a spot on our top 10?
12:40Let us know in the comments section.
12:42Any attempt to test our win will be decisively dealt with.
12:46Twenty-one
12:54No
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