Indulging Kleptocracy: British Service Providers, Postcommunist Elites, and the Enabling of Corruption

A powerful and sophisticated analysis of how Western professionals have enabled kleptocratic elite networks and undermined the rule of law. After the Cold War ended, the British government created the conditions under which a large, multinational class of extremely wealthy kleptocrats based primarily in Russia and Eurasia could move to and thrive in London with a genuine sense of impunity. What is the role of professional enablers in the rise of kleptocracy? In Indulging Kleptocracy, John Heathershaw, Tena Prelec, and Tom Mayne examine the broad range of financial, legal, and related services provided in the UK with respect to suspicious wealth from Russian and Eurasian elites. Through a series of rich, gripping case studies, the authors show how powerful legal and financial service industries that know how to game the system have made it possible for these corrupt elites to operate with relative impunity. They detail how these enablers exploit deregulation and the under-enforcement of the law, offshore their clients' wealth, and enhance their reputations and influence via philanthropy, political donations and the use of the UK's punitive libel regime. They further argue that kleptocracy is not just a moral and economic problem that sits at the margins of real politics, but it impoverishes the global south and undermines institutions in the global north, eroding faith in democracy by empowering corrupt elite business-political networks in global politics. Shedding light on dangerous patterns of corruption, Indulging Kleptocracy explores one of the most fascinating stories in the post-Cold War era and offers suggestions on how to break the system of indulgences and stymie the globalization of kleptocracy.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Oliver Bullough Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter 1: Indulging Kleptocracy Chapter 2: The Ends of Two Empires Chapter 3. Demand: Who Wants What Chapter 4: Supply: The Enabler Effect Chapter 5: Hiding Money Chapter 6: Listing Companies Chapter 7: Buying Rights Chapter 8: Purchasing Properties Chapter 9: Explaining Wealth Chapter 10: Selling Status Chapter 11: Making Friends Chapter 12: Tracking Enemies Chapter 13: Silencing Critics Chapter 14: How To Indulge No More Bibliography Appendices Index

About the Author :
John Heathershaw is Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter. His research addresses conflict, security, and development in authoritarian political environments, especially in post-Soviet Central Asia. He is author of Dictators Without Borders (2017) and The UK's Kleptocracy Problem (2021). In 2021/22 he was a senior fellow of British Academy studying relations between Eurasian kleptocratic elites and British professional service providers. Heathershaw is a member of the Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group (AFIWG) of the UK which campaigns for transparency and accountability in British universities' international relations. Tena Prelec is Assistant Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe at the University of Rijeka. Her research focuses mostly on anti-corruption and EU politics, with a geographic focus on the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe more widely. From 2019 to 2023, she has been a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where her work centered on transnational kleptocracy and illicit finance. She obtained her PhD from the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC), at the University of Sussex with a thesis on elite transition in successor Yugoslav states. Prelec is also a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) and a Research Associate at LSEE-Research on Southeastern Europe, London School of Economics and Political Science. Tom Mayne is a Research Fellow at The University of Exeter and a former Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is also a former Senior Campaigner at anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, where he was one of the researchers on the group's reports on Central Asia and Eurasia. He has authored a variety of reports on corruption, kleptocracy, and the UK's anti-money laundering regulations and legislations, including Criminality Notwithstanding (with John Heathershaw).

Review :
Indulging Kleptocracy achieves the extremely rare feat of marking a major advance in the scholarly study of corruption, while at the same time shedding a harsh light on the seediest side of the UK's political economy. A work of masterly investigation, the book exposes not just a failure to stem a tide of dirty money washing through Britain's institutions, but the active and on-going complicity of many in the political establishment, the financial sector, the professions, and think-tanks and elite universities in aiding and abetting foreign kleptocrats. This is an extraordinarily important book coming at a crucial time. It is a vital primer for policymakers, politicians, and campaigners to understand how the UK has become one of the world's most respectable enablers of kleptocracy. And it is a wake-up call for all of us to hold enablers and the institutions that facilitate them to account. Executive Kleptocracy is a global problem, but it has very British causes. Heathershaw, Prelec, and Mayne have identified a hard truth that many of our politicians have shied away from--we have rolled out the red carpet out for any crook, oligarch, or kleptocrat with a few million to spend and gleefully served as a one-stop shop for anyone looking to launder ill-gotten gains or murky reputations. This is an important analysis of how dirty money has flowed into the UK, and why this is catastrophic not just for the impoverished nations it is being stolen from, but also for the British cultural, economic, and political institutions it undermines. With great analytical nuance and ethnographic skill, Indulging Kleptocracy recasts our assumptions about how transnational kleptocracy operates within the zones of legal ambiguity created by the globalization of financial and legal services. Far from being marginal players for distant autocrats, the book persuasively shows how today's professional enablers, through their modern-day indulgences, have forged the kleptocratic networks that thrive in the UK and across the West. A brave and rigorous book, Indulging Kleptocracy reveals an entire system of professional support that wraps around wealthy corrupt actors, lifting them up within business, social and political circles, and legitimizing their interests. As the authors describe with great clarity and urgency, this system has grown so large and so unchallenged that it now threatens the integrity of our economies and our democracies. Nuanced, fair and immensely readable, this is essential reading for our time. The book is a model of relevant academic research and is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how money moves around the world in the twenty-first century.