
American Kleptocracy
How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History
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Narrated by:
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Joe Dwyer
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By:
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Casey Michel
About this listen
A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, American Kleptocracy offers the first explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known.
"An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." (The Los Angeles Review of Books)
For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars, and potentially more, in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sleepy, sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most from modern offshoring also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the United States of America.
From anonymous shell companies and legal inventions like “perpetual trusts” to public relations and lobbying shops willing to do anything they can to camouflage the source of the dirty money, the United States’ transformation into the center of global offshoring is complete. And while Donald Trump presented, in many ways, the ultimate culmination of the US’s descent, the country’s trajectory has been decades in the making.
American Kleptocracy will examine just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the US; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership - and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.
It will also look at how Trump’s presidency accelerated all of the trends already on hand - and how the Biden administration can, and should, act on this inheritance.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
©2021 Casey Michel (P)2021 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Casey Michel cuts through the spin, to reveal the inner workings of the American economy. His writing has shown again and again the subterfuges and secrecy at the heart of how money moves through the financial system, and does it with panache, wit, and a blessed aversion to jargon. I always read his work, and can't wait to read this one." (Oliver Bullough, author of the international best seller Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World)
"Casey is the foremost journalistic voice in the fight against kleptocracy. No other individual is so consistently on the case and interested in both the actors and the possible policy responses. His knowledge of the existential danger posed by kleptocracy is bar none, and we rely on his work like no one else to inform policy." (Paul Massaro, congressional policy advisor, US Helsinki Commission)
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Overall
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The Suez Crisis of 1956 was the nadir of Britain's twentieth century, the moment when the once-superpower was bullied into retreat. "Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role," said Dean Acherson, a former US secretary of state. Acheson's line has entered into the canon of great quotations: but it was wrong. Britain had already found a role. The leaders of the world just hadn't noticed it yet. Butler to the World reveals how Britain came to assume its role as the center of the offshore economy.
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Extraordinary
- By Brad on 12-30-22
By: Oliver Bullough
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Offshore
- Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism
- By: Brooke Harrington
- Narrated by: Jennifer Walden
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? The ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world's ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way.
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Informative
- By Seattle mom on 03-02-25
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Capital Without Borders
- Wealth Managers and the One Percent
- By: Brooke Harrington
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Capital Without Borders tackles this tantalizing question through a groundbreaking multi-year investigation of the men and women who specialize in protecting the fortunes of the world's richest people. Brooke Harrington followed the money to the 18 most popular tax havens in the world, interviewing wealth managers to understand how they help their high-net-worth clients dodge taxes, creditors, and disgruntled heirs - all while staying just within the letter of the law.
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Eye opening read on roots of Wealth Management
- By Amazon Customer on 01-25-21
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The Oligarchs
- Wealth and Power in the New Russia
- By: David Hoffman
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for
The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.
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Supreme Chronicle of Murky Times
- By ivan on 03-01-14
By: David Hoffman
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Rinsed
- From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks
- By: Geoff White
- Narrated by: Geoff White
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Money laundering has been around for centuries. For as long as people have been stealing money, there's been an industry ready to wash it. But recent tech innovations have created vastly complex new systems for laundering that threaten to overwhelm authorities, destabilise economies and disrupt societies. Ranging from the flamboyant luxury of Dubai hotels to quiet coastal Ireland, from the UK to Nigeria and from Indonesia to North Korea, Rinsed is a truly global relevatory investigation into the new army of innovative launderers ... and the consequences for all of us.
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Almost but not quite plagiarism
- By T.T. on 06-19-24
By: Geoff White
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How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism
- Canons
- By: Ece Temelkuran
- Narrated by: Ece Temelkuran
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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How to Lose a Country is a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don't march fully-formed into government; they creep. Weaving memoir, history and clear-sighted argument, Temelkuran proposes alternative answers to the pressing - and too often paralysing - political questions of our time. How to Lose A Country is an exploration of the insidious ideas at the core of these movements and an urgent, eloquent defence of democracy.
By: Ece Temelkuran
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Invisible Rulers
- The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
- By: Renee DiResta
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Renée DiResta’s powerful, original investigation into the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion. While propagandists position themselves as trustworthy Davids, their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths—invisible rulers who create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true.
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the more things change...
- By Gina S. on 07-01-24
By: Renee DiResta
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Tracers in the Dark
- The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
- By: Andy Greenberg
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.
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Could not put this down
- By Mike Reaves on 01-28-23
By: Andy Greenberg
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American Oligarchs
- The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power
- By: Andrea Bernstein
- Narrated by: Andrea Bernstein
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein creates a vivid portrait of two emblematic American families. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, which stretches from the Gilded Age through Nazi-occupied Poland to the rising nationalism and inequality of the 21st century. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and over 100,000 pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein traces how the families grew rich on federal programs that bolstered the middle class.
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Informative, Interesting and Illuminating
- By Phyllis on 02-27-20
By: Andrea Bernstein
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The Wolves of K Street
- The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government
- By: Brody Mullins, Luke Mullins
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, Washington’s center of power began to shift away from elected officials in big marble buildings to a handful of savvy, handsomely paid operators who didn’t answer to any fixed constituency. The cigar-chomping son of an influential congressman, an illustrious political fixer with a weakness for modern art, a Watergate-era dirty trickster, the city’s favorite cocktail party host—these were the sort of men who now ran Washington.
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A cast of characters
- By Judy L. Bourget MD Inc. on 06-15-24
By: Brody Mullins, and others
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The Flow of Illicit Funds
- A Case Study Approach to Anti–Money Laundering Compliance
- By: Ola M. Tucker
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Money laundering is a serious crime that presents a heightened, yet underrated, global threat. Although often thought of as a victimless crime, money laundering significantly impacts the global financial system, which leads to further crime, corruption, human exploitation, and environmental degradation and causes tremendous human suffering, especially in the most impoverished populations.
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My favorite so far on this topic
- By Philo on 01-08-23
By: Ola M. Tucker
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran.
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A Triumphant Work -Puts It All Together With Laser Clarity
- By Sjhoffman on 09-19-24
By: Anne Applebaum
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Tyranny, Inc.
- How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It
- By: Sohrab Ahmari
- Narrated by: Sohrab Ahmari
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”.
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Doesn't address the whole picture
- By Penelope M on 09-18-23
By: Sohrab Ahmari
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Freezing Order
- A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
- By: Bill Browder
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail in 2009, Browder cast aside his business career and made it his life’s mission to pursue justice for Sergei. One of the first steps of that mission was to uncover who had killed Sergei and profited from the $230 million corruption scheme that he had exposed. As Browder and his team tracked the money that flowed out of Russia—through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas—they discovered that Vladimir Putin himself was one of the beneficiaries of the crime.
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Red Notice Part II —- The Empire Struck Out
- By R. Alembik on 04-16-22
By: Bill Browder
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Left Adrift
- What Happened to Liberal Politics
- By: Timothy Shenk
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Politics today doesn’t look much like it did fifty years ago. Electorates that were once divided by economics—with blue-collar workers supporting leftwing parties while the wealthy trended right—are now more likely to split along cultural lines. Campaigns have gone high-tech, hoping to turn electioneering into a science. Meanwhile, a permanent class of political consultants has emerged, with teams of pollsters, message gurus, and field operatives. Taken together, all this amounts to a silent revolution that has transformed politics across much of the globe.
By: Timothy Shenk
What listeners say about American Kleptocracy
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- David B Weiding
- 01-27-22
Reality Strikes
This is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand politics of today's America. The book covers things we know to be true, but the extent of the corruption if America is surprising and terrifying. Though both parties play to some extent, this result is the outcome of the breaking of American government by the GOP. Regulating business and reigning in broken state governments is vital. Well told tale with examples and cases to balance policy discussions.
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- Diana C Davis
- 03-20-22
Follow the money…
That was a real eye opener- almost sad to think we (American voters) are complicit in enabling all these things to transpire- and further amazing to think how many Americans just love the Trump organization- and how he ‘drained the swamp’ along with trying to decide if I’ve been alive for any positive presidents who truly had moral or ethical principles? Republicans/Democrats can’t seem to decide which is worse. Thank you for your research- and publishing this information. Wow, just, wow!
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- Carol Hannon
- 10-24-24
Relevant topic for today
I learned a lot about the hiding of money by foreign nationals in US banks. Fascinating material well presented, easy to understand. Good narration.
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- Philo
- 11-05-22
It's okay. I prefer The Flow of Illicit Funds ...
... which I just reviewed here. This one is entertaining, I guess. I wanted something more systematic in its coverage, not a few glossy stories. I hear about another sports car or L.A. mansion, and I glaze over. Who cares about that trash? There was some reasonably current discussion about what the enforcers are doing.
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1 person found this helpful
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- tracymflourish
- 01-13-23
Really Good Read
This book was very clear and educational. Audio book speaker had an overly rapid cadence.
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- Jacob Salisbury
- 08-31-22
Eye opening
Everyone should read/listen to this book. It will really explains how how corrupt our financial system is.
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- Sue S. Wilson
- 02-27-22
American Kleptocracy
This is a very important book. It is so relevant helping everyday people like me have a far better understanding of how dirty money has been lawfully laundered!! Because of the current situation with Russia and Ukraine,we hear the word oligarchy and how oligarchs and their money has become part of the focus on sanctions. A clear and concise reporting of the subject.
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- "teebalicious"
- 11-30-24
Enraging, as it should be.
Immaculate in its research, clear in its prose, and vitally important in subject matter, this book will have you reaching for the next page as well as your blood pressure meds. One of the most important books for understanding the economy to come, and how to fight back.
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- Amazamiac
- 11-30-24
It’s what’s upstream of America’s political problem
It’s an honorable act to pull babies out of the river but it begs the question: why are there babies in the river? If we look upstream, we might be able to see. For someone like me who has never been able to grasp what’s going on in politics b/c it’s too big and complex, this book shifts everything into focus. I see the problem and am able to have relevant political discussions. I wish I knew about Am. Kleptocracy before the 2024 election. Fortunately the author gives me hope - even with Trump in office - by informing its readers to know what efforts endorse!
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- R.H.
- 10-19-22
One sided, but entertaining and well researched
Knowledgeable author, good writer, but wildly biased in a painfully leftist (not liberal) way. Basically claims that nobody should ever be allowed financial privacy from politicians under any circumstances. Ironic considering he refers to government corruption throughout the entire work.
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1 person found this helpful