Strategies of kleptocrats and their enablers are becoming increasingly sophisticated

International assessments of corruption can’t properly show the increasingly sophisticated way elite people from rogue states use global networks to manage illicit finances, experts have warned.

Lawyers and professional enablers are used to hiding the shady origins of huge sums of stolen or misappropriated money and converting them to spendable and protected assets, as well as recasting the public images of the members of the kleptocracy.

“Philanthropy” is increasingly being used to change the image of countries and individuals.

Global corruption rankings don’t recognize the structured use of wealth managers, accounting firms, and international bankers, as well as citizenship managers, brokers, lobbyists, public relations firms and lawyers.

A new study describes this era of reputation laundering as ‘transnational uncivil societies’. The aims of transnational uncivil societies extend beyond personal benefits to politics and to further authoritarian and kleptocratic power.

The study is published in the European Journal of International Relations.

What the researchers say: “This is a growing type of conflict in global politics. Kleptocrats eject liberal activists from their own territories and create new spaces to whitewash their own reputations and build their own transnational networks,” the lead author told us. “To do so, they hire political consultants and reputation managers, engage in public philanthropy and forge new relationships with major global institutions.

“These strategies of reputation-laundering are neither illicit nor marginal, but very much a product of the actors, institutions and markets generated by the liberal international order.”

The story shows how these relationships between elites, lawyers and others may begin as contractual but over the long term are likely to become clientelistic (mutually crooked dealings) as each party gains greater knowledge of the ‘grey’ and illegal behaviors of the other.

As part of transnational uncivil society, reputation management is used in an aggressive and targeted way, while ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’ (SLAPPs) are also increasingly deployed in the United Kingdom to tie civil society and media organizations up in lengthy and uncertain court procedures that effectively stifle the free speech necessary for advocacy campaigns (DT’s favorite tactic in the US).

Elites use sovereign rights to move to or reside in the West through entering diplomatic service, securing citizenship or a foreign residence, as well as participation in an investor visa or second passport.

“Transnational uncivil societies seek to protect their own exclusive national sovereignty and regime authority at home, while eroding popular sovereignty in overseas liberal democracies by securing the right of residency and nurturing clientelistic ties and influence,” the researchers said. “Cumulatively, these networks of elites, foundations and private service professionals enhance the authority and legitimacy of uncivil elites, helping to blunt other actual advocacy campaigns.”

So, what? This is a great study by researchers from three UK universities. In the US, DT’s presidency was becoming increasingly kleptocratic.

One of my “six horsemen” of the modern apocalypse is increasing inequality and these kleptocratic social elites increasingly have ties with each other, ensuring that the ownership of goods, services, and even countries, are in fewer and fewer hands.