- 17 hours ago
Professor and scholar in fascism and authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about dictatorships, corrupt governments and kleptocracy. Which country is the most corrupt in the world? How do corrupt dictators hide their money? Is Trump the most corrupt president? Answers to these questions and many more await on Corruption Support.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00I'm historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
00:01Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:04This is Tech Support Corruption.
00:10Andy Doodle asks, how do third world rulers get so rich
00:14if their countries are so broke ass?
00:17Well, often those countries are broke and get broker
00:20because the dictator is stealing public funds.
00:24A good case in point is Mobutu Seseseko,
00:27who was the leader of Congo for three decades.
00:30He became immensely wealthy, amassing a fortune
00:34of five billion in a country
00:36where the average daily wage was one dollar.
00:39How did he do this?
00:40He stole public funds.
00:42He took tax money and directed it to his pet projects,
00:46also to Swiss bank accounts.
00:48He took kickbacks from foreign companies doing business
00:52such as diamond extraction.
00:54Mobutu was an important ally in the Cold War.
00:56He was anti-communist.
00:58So the International Monetary Fund and the United States
01:01gave him lots of loans that were supposed to be
01:04to improve the country.
01:05Instead, that money went straight to his bank accounts.
01:10At Gadek asks, Alexa, define corruption.
01:13Corruption is the abuse of power for private gain.
01:17Now, corruption is also what we don't do,
01:19and that's called dereliction of duty,
01:21when we don't report abuses of power.
01:24When we look the other way at the weaponization
01:26of investigations against innocent people.
01:29Or when we simply give up the idea of ethics
01:32in the workplace and in life.
01:35Rocky Wired asks,
01:37Be honest.
01:38Which country is the most corrupt in the world?
01:41Transparency.org tracks corruption
01:43and absence of transparency in countries around the world.
01:47So they have a list.
01:48And according to this list, South Sudan is the most corrupt,
01:52followed by Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen, Libya,
01:56Eritrea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Syria, and North Korea.
02:00Some of these countries, such as Venezuela,
02:02are corrupt because the government is in an alliance
02:05with criminal gangs, which are used as enforcers
02:09to beat up state enemies, also to get bribes from people.
02:13And there becomes a gray zone between the state
02:16and civilian criminal actors.
02:18Other countries, such as South Sudan and Yemen,
02:22are countries where authority has become fragmented.
02:24And there are warlords, each of them
02:26with their own corruption networks.
02:29Myanmar is also on the list, and that is a military junta,
02:32where the military has been allowed to become active players
02:36in corruption schemes.
02:38Military officials have amassed their own fortunes.
02:41And this is how dictators keep people tied to the system.
02:46Rockknocker61 asks,
02:47Why does it appear that the number one job of all politicians
02:50is to enrich their family?
02:53Well, autocrats are family men, in a way.
02:56Since Mussolini, in Italy, they surround themselves
02:59with family members because family members can keep their secrets
03:03and be easily controlled.
03:04Mussolini appointed his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano,
03:08as foreign minister.
03:09And Ciano and his family had their own corruption network,
03:12we now know.
03:13Sons-in-law have an important place
03:15in the history of autocratic corruption.
03:17In Turkey, Erdogan's son-in-law runs the biggest drone-producing company
03:23in Turkey, which is drones used all over the world.
03:26In the United States, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law,
03:29has been conducting private business on behalf of his company,
03:33which is partly funded by the Saudis.
03:35At the same time, he is representing the U.S. government
03:39in sensitive negotiations in Ukraine and Iran.
03:43In healthy democracies, this would be called a conflict of interest.
03:47But the Trump administration does not recognize conflicts of interest.
03:50This is the privatization of foreign policy,
03:53and it's something that's very common in corrupt governments.
03:58Dover299 asks, where do politicians get so rich from?
04:02Here we need to differentiate between politicians growing rich after they leave office,
04:08when they're not bound anymore by conflicts of interest.
04:12Former heads of state, and this is true all around the world,
04:15can become very rich after they leave office.
04:18From book deals, from speaking gigs, all kinds of things.
04:22consulting, anything that's going to use their expertise as a former head of state.
04:27Quite different are leaders who amass wealth while they're still in office,
04:31ignoring conflicts of interest.
04:33And that's the case with Donald Trump,
04:34who has amassed $5 billion in only 18 months in office.
04:39There have been deals made that involve profits for the companies owned by his family.
04:45He also promotes personal products with his name on them,
04:49which is something that former U.S. presidents have never done.
04:53And over $640 million estimated has come in from foreign investments to Trump and his family.
05:04Literally, kleptocracy means rule by thieves, klepto being a thief.
05:10Kleptocracy is a government where corruption and thievery have become so institutionalized,
05:16so pervasive, that corruption is how you get things done.
05:20It's a system where elites use their political positions to amass private wealth,
05:26where private businesses are plundered by the state and have to pay bribes and kickbacks.
05:31If they don't, they're subjected to legal harassment, to tax audits,
05:35and sometimes even forced to sell at a loss.
05:39And the beneficiary of all this is the state.
05:42Ordinary citizens have to pay bribes to get basic social services.
05:46This was true often in the former communist countries, certainly in Romania of Ceausescu,
05:51who had his country living in poverty while he lived in a grand palace.
05:56Many countries that have a lot of oil or energy deposits become kleptocracies.
06:01And this is known as the resource curse.
06:04The curse being that autocrats who have large supplies of oil or natural gas
06:10tend to stay in power longer.
06:13In Gaddafi's Libya, of course, the dictator was supreme.
06:16But oil profits created centers of extreme wealth around oil distribution and production.
06:23Over time, these executives and others in the state bureaucracy who had to do with oil
06:29became immensely wealthy.
06:31On the way, corruption becomes endemic.
06:34It becomes pervasive.
06:35In Gaddafi's Libya, which was a kleptocracy, everyone involved in the oil industry,
06:42whether private or in the government, amassed private fortunes and were stealing these profits.
06:48Instead of putting the oil profits for public good, for roads, for public welfare,
06:54most of them were siphoned off into Swiss bank accounts.
06:58Now, sometimes, if the dictator falls from power, as happened to Gaddafi,
07:03this can lead to instability after, because these people can become almost like warlords.
07:09And so you have a fragmentation of power once the dictator leaves.
07:14El Rey asks,
07:15How do corrupt dictators hide their money?
07:17Asking for a friend.
07:19In the olden days, dictators used Swiss bank accounts.
07:22Because until 2018, you could be anonymous.
07:25And there was no transparency regarding these bank accounts.
07:28So you could stash your money in these Swiss bank accounts and feel safe.
07:32Nowadays, offshore finance is the game.
07:34Because anonymity is guaranteed, you can create a shell corporation
07:39or have your money under someone else's name.
07:42Very convenient for the bad actors in the world.
07:44Until the 21st century, United Kingdom outposts such as Gibraltar
07:48were big places for dictators to put their money.
07:52Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, had his money in United Kingdom banks offshore.
07:59Nowadays, the United States has come to be one of the main players in offshore finance.
08:05States such as Nevada and Delaware and South Dakota are places where many warlords,
08:11arms dealers, dictators reportedly stash their funds.
08:16Yet AnotherBan21 asks,
08:18So what corruption is Benjamin Netanyahu involved with again?
08:22Netanyahu faces three separate cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.
08:27Regular politicians, if they are facing investigation or have charges against them,
08:32they don't want to run for office.
08:33Journalists could start poking around.
08:35Who knows what might come out?
08:36If you are a wannabe autocrat, though, like Netanyahu,
08:40you are compelled to run for office because the point is to get into power and fix the judiciary
08:46so your legal problems can go away.
08:50A list of leaders who were under investigation when they ran for office includes Vladimir Putin,
08:56Silvio Berlusconi three times, Donald Trump three times, and Netanyahu,
09:01who came into power and immediately pursued something he called judicial reform,
09:07which was supposed to fix the judicial system to make his legal problems go away.
09:12From the Ask a Russian subreddit,
09:14Where did Putin get his wealth?
09:16Russia is a kleptocracy,
09:18and President Vladimir Putin is rumored to be among the richest men in the world.
09:23How did he do it?
09:24On one hand, he plundered public agencies, in particular Gazprom,
09:29which is the oil and natural gas conglomerate.
09:32Basically, kleptocrats see public agencies as pots of money that they can take for themselves.
09:39So that's one way Putin did it, by siphoning off profits from public agencies.
09:44The second is by plundering private businesses.
09:48A shocking one out of six Russian businesses has been seized by the state or threatened by the state
09:55or had a shakedown, which requires them to pay bribes or sell at a loss.
10:00And so again, it's the private sector and the public sector.
10:04When you put these together, you create a formidable income stream for a dictator.
10:10Legitimate Sunday 8460 asks,
10:12Is Trump the most corrupt president?
10:14Without a doubt.
10:15Donald Trump has made over $5 billion just in the 18 months he has been in office.
10:22Donors have been given contracts for businesses, high political positions.
10:27He promotes personal goods, profits to which go toward the companies owned by his family
10:34or companies owned by donors.
10:36Trump has also pardoned financial criminals as well as political criminals.
10:41The Poor Man's Thinking Man on Quora asks,
10:44Why are the cronies of dictators always rich?
10:47Here we have the concept of authoritarian bargains.
10:50Dictators make bargains with elites.
10:52Could be media elites, financial elites, business elites.
10:55They make money in return for absolute loyalty.
10:59There are no bid contracts.
11:00Competition is gamed in their favor.
11:03The state doesn't go after them.
11:04Over time, this results in what's called a mafia state,
11:07where clans associated by profit to the dictator become immensely wealthy
11:13and powerful in and of themselves.
11:15In Putin's Russia, for example, there's the dictator, Vladimir Putin,
11:19and there are the oligarchs who become immensely wealthy by sharing profits from illicit transactions.
11:25And this is how the dictator keeps them tied to him.
11:29It can be dangerous to speak out, even if you're immensely wealthy, against a dictator.
11:34In Russia, you might fall out of a window.
11:36Corruption isn't only about finances.
11:38It's a way of keeping people in line.
11:41The dictator knows your secrets.
11:43In Russian, this is called kompromat.
11:45And the dictator, especially if he comes from an intelligence background like Putin,
11:50keeps information on those oligarchs, which he can use at any time.
11:54And so this, too, is part of the authoritarian bargain.
11:57It's not just profit, but it's keeping each other's secrets.
12:03Whereyaat42wallabyway asks,
12:05I wonder why corrupt leaders always beef with the press.
12:10If you want to know if someone is trying to be an autocrat, look at how they talk about the
12:15press.
12:16Do they deride them as fake news?
12:18Do they say they're corrupt, not to be trusted?
12:21Usually.
12:22That's because autocratic leaders or wannabe autocrats usually have secrets to hide,
12:27and they know the press could expose them.
12:29Autocrats are afraid of journalists uncovering their corruption.
12:34And so autocrats try to silence, especially investigative journalists.
12:38That is a very dangerous profession.
12:41DamnDirtyApe asks, why do some governments become corrupt?
12:45Are there structural issues that make some governments more prone to corruption?
12:49There can be corruption in any kind of political system, democracies, autocracies.
12:53Corruption can happen anywhere in the world where there's a leader and a political system
12:59that promotes it because of the imperative of self-preservation.
13:03Autocrats are deathly afraid of being prosecuted.
13:06This could be in Turkey, where Erdogan has repeatedly fired prosecutors and judges and watchdogs.
13:13The same thing happened in Hungary, where Orban stopped an EU investigation against his son-in-law
13:19from taking place.
13:20So it's not just in third world countries.
13:23Corruption could be anywhere if the conditions are right.
13:27P. Gadapa Books asks, can democracy survive corruption?
13:32Corrupt systems create environments in which things that used to be considered illegal and immoral,
13:38such as lying about elections, stealing from the public, sexual abuse.
13:43They become normalized.
13:44When that happens and institutions get retooled to protect immoral people, then democracy suffers.
13:52Now sometimes sexual assaults can be a prompt for a democracy to protect itself.
13:58That happened in Italy when Berlusconi, who had sex parties with young women,
14:03was actually forced to step down.
14:05He was investigated and convicted not only for bribery and fraud,
14:10but for sex with a minor.
14:12Around the world, foreign governments have been prosecuting politicians
14:15who associated with Jeffrey Epstein and appear in the Epstein files.
14:19That has yet to happen in the United States.
14:24zGermans31b asks, denying elections, hmm, what has history taught us about this occurrence?
14:31Many autocrats commit electoral fraud.
14:33If the election doesn't go your way, you claim it was rigged, or you refuse to have the votes counted,
14:39or in the worst case, you refuse to leave office.
14:42But election denial is something that's often not considered under the bucket of corruption.
14:47But I believe it is, because it is public officials conspiring to lie to the public.
14:54In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election and claimed it had been rigged.
14:59Later, he tried to stage a coup to prevent Lula da Silva from coming to power.
15:05He now sits convicted with 27 years sentence.
15:10Tegor asks, how does a country uncorrupt itself?
15:14And what are some of the best examples of this from recent times?
15:17A country can uncorrupt itself by restoring regulations that autocracies have removed.
15:22They can restore professional ethics requirements for civil servants, compliance for businesses and
15:28corporations, and they can reign in the leader who has to be held accountable.
15:34We're seeing this in Hungary, where Peter Magyar, the successor of Viktor Orban,
15:39is restoring regulations that Orban discarded in order to restore transparency and accountability
15:46to Hungary.
15:47So those are all the questions for today.
15:50Thanks for watching.
Comments