KLEPTOPIA: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World
£7.30£9.50 (-23%)
SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘If you think the UK isn’t corrupt, you haven’t looked hard enough … This terrifying book follows a global current of dirty money, and the murders and kidnappings required to sustain it’ GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN
AN ECONOMIST AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
‘When you pick this book up, you won’t be able to put it down’ MISHA GLENNY, author of MCMAFIA
‘Gripping, disturbing and deeply reported’ BEN RHODES, bestselling author of THE WORLD AS IT IS
In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis reveals a terrifying global web of kleptocracy and corruption.
Kleptopia follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, enriching oligarchs and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, London to the Trump White House, it shows how the thieves are uniting – and the terrible human cost.
A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London – the world’s piggy bank for blood money.
Riveting, horrifying and written like fiction, this book shows that while we are looking the other way, all that we hold most dear is being stolen.
Tom Burgis’ book ‘KLEPTOPIA’ was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 14-03-2022.
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Additional information
| Publisher | William The 4th (8 July 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 480 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008308381 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008308384 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 3.05 x 19.8 cm |
by Amazon Customer
An interesting book, well written, but a lot of the detail has been covered elsewhere , so I found myself skimming through the second part.
But it is a highly praised examination of how dirty / illegitimate mney is flooding the economies of the world and corroding basic values. If one hasn’t already been reading about this activities, then I do recommed it.
by London Lass
I bought the paperback as a gift for my better half, then I borrowed the ebook through Kindle Unlimited and read it myself. It’s a staggering tale of corruption in the former Soviet Union and in Africa, showing how power is grabbed and monetised. The book is very well-researched, with references taking up about a third of it. You may be surprised by what, and who, can be bought. It’s not only bankers who have taken dirty dollars for their services. I hope Tom Burgis’s hard work will translate into government action to stamp out corruption.
by Brian Lait
I have now read a number of books that highlight the absurd amount of kleptocracy being allowed around the world, and most of it with the relevant governments “looking the other way”. This book was of interest as it seemed to concentrate on the Kazak economy and the odious Nursultan Nazarbayev, although there are worthy mentions of the obnoxious Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Putin, Kabila, Mugabe and my old friend Dmytru Firtash ni the Ukraine. Chuck in the incompetents and devious characters such as Blair, Cameron and Osborne and you have an entertaining and informative read.
Thank you Mr. Burgis.
I was somewhat uncertain about the actual existence of one Nigel Wilkins. Was he real, or a fictitious character woven into the whole story ?
by Lou
What.a.book.
Journalism isn’t dead. This book makes you think you can actually be a well informed citizen. Info is available if only one takes the trouble to find it.
by michael kenny
v. intresting
by Kommersantka
I have some personal experiences that relate to the narrative told in this book. I spent a decade working in Moscow in the 2000s and went to a prominent Moscow university favoured by sons and daughters of the elite before that. I was certainly a spectator on the periphery of the international business community. This book joins a lot of dots, explaining not just what is happening in the obvious kleptocracies like Russia but (and I like this the most) at home in the UK and the master country over the Atlantic. I’ve long felt that Russia could be such a wonderful country – it has everything for a prosperous society and really good way if life. Britain less so, as its very poor in terms of nature, natural resources and space. But I see two people united by one thing: the common assets and infrastructures if both countries have been stripped and sold off, leaving the populations highly vulnerable. When even the IMF is moved to comment that you have sold trillions off the value of your country to the point where they consider it potentially destabilising (they said this in a report about the UK economy several years ago), you have to wonder. Unfortunately, most news outlets present the news as this country versus that country – what this book highlights powerfully is that it is divided by class and wealth. The kleptocrats are true citizens of the world.
by Entropy
Tom Burgis has written a superb book, in a style more like a fiction novel but the story is all to real. If you want to know how the world and the those who control the actions and voices of our Politicians, then this book is for you. Its a must read on how Moscow oligarchs aided and abetted by a corrupt world of offshore banking, shell companies, lawyers, lobbyists and financiers, have influenced the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s rise to power in US and manipulation of the conservative party in the UK through the use of dirty money. Look at those countries who’s leaders tell lies as truths in order to hide their dirty secrets, who have learned to use the same tactics as the ones used by organized crime in order to gain and maintain power and influence with a compliant self interested media barons. The tragic heroes like Nigel and others who tried to shine light on the ever growing Kleptocracy that is so embedded around the world that is now impossible to stop.
by Chris H
It is important to note at the outset that Burgis has done a fantastic – and a brave – job in exposing the complicity of western financial, legal and political institutions in laundering the billions of illegal cash that flowed out of Kazakhstan (and, in particular, from the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation or ENRC) in the aftermath of the breakup of communism in the former the Soviet Union. The afterword in which Burgis reveals that he is now being harassed by the kleptocracy which he reveals is a chilling tribute to his courage and integrity in writing in such a focused fashion on the accompanying corruption. As such, it’s a book which needs to be read by anyone who has any pretentions to understand the modern world and the vulnerability of those with power to wealth; expect to be angered and appalled.
The issue – the reason for four rather than five stars – is that, although his efforts are truly laudable, Burgis struggles to sustain a narrative involving scores of people (most of them with Eastern European, Kazakh and Russian names) through the endless complexities of a lengthy plot. He does as well as anyone might (by listing a “cast of characters” at the beginning of the book and by spending a good deal of time following the action from the perspective of his English hero, Nigel Wilkins, and the more compromised figure of Peter Sahlas, a Canadian lawyer) but, as others have noted, the final narrative is clouded by the intricacy of its many pan-national threads. The action moves swiftly across four continents and involves an A to Z of characters (from A for assassins to Z for Trump) and, even if you read it with an open notebook by your side, you’re liable to find it a bit demanding as a holiday read.
So, overall, the world is a far, far better place for Burgis having written this book and he deserves the awards which have come his way; everybody needs more of this sort of investigative journalism. Just don’t expect to find it quite as compelling as “The Big Short”!