Diana Henriques, award-winning journalist and author, discusses the traits of fraudsters and the menace of reputation laundering. This episode was originally published on 3 August 2024.
Melissa Goldin, a NY-based News Verification Reporter and Editor with The Associated Press analyzes and debunks fake news. This episode was originally published on 24 July 2024.
This week, we’re listening in on Alexandra Wrage’s keynote presentation at a Whistleblowers and Public Integrity conference hosted by the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute (VACI). She addresses the incredible personal price that whistleblowers pay when they’re driven to expose misconduct, explores how we can begin to shift the tone of the discussion around reporting and notes how difficult it is to uncover financial crime without whistleblowers. This episode was originally published on 16 Nove...
Paul Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist at the Financial Times and Author of “A Death in Malta”, joins the podcast to talk about the work of his mother, Daphne, the growing danger she perceived as her investigations reached the highest circles of power in Malta, and now the criminal proceedings against the two men who killed her. Paul also discusses the Daphne Foundation and the incredible journalistic community that worked together, again, to prove that killing a journalist won’t kill...
At the TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting award ceremony last month, former prosecutor and National Observer columnist Sandy Garossino led a conversation with ICIJ’s Spencer Woodman, Bellingcat’s Aric Toler, and 2022 Prize winners Hans Peterson Hammer of Göteborgs-Posten and Lilia Saúl Rodriguez of the OCCRP. They discuss the evolution, impact and future of cross-border collaborative investigative journalism. This episode was originally published on 20 July 2022.
Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa joins the podcast to talk about corruption, disinformation and how to stand up to a dictator. This podcast was originally published on February 22, 2023.
Dr. Magnus Ohman of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) joins the podcast to discuss how corruption undermines free and fair elections. He discusses his recent publication "Vote for Free: A Global Guide for Citizen Monitoring of Campaign Finance," which provides an eight-step model for civil society organizations seeking to monitor campaign finance. This episode was originally published on 30 November 2022.
Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody describe with passion their work with the International Rescue Committee. They tell us what America as a haven means to them and mourn the news that 545 children separated from their parents on the US southern border cannot be restored to their parents. They conclude with a fervent appeal to Americans to turn out to vote in this election. This episode was originally published in October 2020.
As Syria struggles to get on its feet after decades under the tyrannical father-son Assad regime, we're revisiting a story from 2024 when those desperate to leave Syria were preyed upon by a human smuggling ring. The story was brought to light by Mahmoud Elsobky, one of the two winners of the 2024 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting. Originally posted on Jul. 10, 2024
We are revisiting an episode from 2020 with David Shimer. David discusses his book that reviews the century of covert election interference by Russia and the U.S., the known impact of Russian meddling in 2016, and their growing capacity to interfere in future elections. This episode was originally published on 22 September 2020.
With these issues back in the headlines, we’re revisiting an important discussion with Leonid Volkov, originally recorded in 2022 at the TRACE London Forum. Leonid is the Political Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and was Alexei Navalny’s former Chief of Staff. He discusses the role of corruption in Putin’s Russia as well as the impact of sanctions and the toll that rampant corruption is taking on Russia. This episode was originally published on 5 October 2022....
This podcast is based on TRACE's recent Year in Review webinar with Kate Atkinson. Kate is a Member and the Chair of Miller & Chevalier, based in their DC office, and she reviews for us the FCPA highlights for 2024.
We’re reposting our 2017 podcast with Adam Davidson of the New Yorker who joined the podcast to talk about his research into the baffling Trump Hotel deal in Baku. This episode was originally published on 14 June 2017.
In light of last week’s inauguration, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast episode with Dan Alexander, author and senior editor at Forbes, discussing his book about Trump’s business deals with foreign entities, including one very strange deal with the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. This episode was originally published on 7 October 2020.
This inauguration week, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast on President Trump's assault on the civil service. In this episode, Harvard law professor, Matthew Stephenson, provides some context for understanding Trump's executive order on the civil service and then lists the three primary threats it poses for corruption. A more detailed discussion can be found on his Global Anticorruption Blog . This episode was originally published on 4 November 2020....
Our guest today, Dr. Rebecca Connolly, joins us to discuss her work on the legal governance of outer space relating to militarization, security and commercialization, drawing some interesting parallels to the law of the sea and making it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done.
Karina Litvack joins the podcast to share her insights into climate governance based on her extensive board experience in the oil and gas sector and her role as the Founding Chair of the Climate Governance Initiative.
As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan’s audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire . This episode was originally published on 20 December 2017.
Patrick Gushue, the Department of Justice’s Acting Director of its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, joins the podcast to discuss the program, uptake to date, who is eligible and key considerations as to timing and whistleblower involvement in the misconduct. More information about the pilot program is available at justice.gov/corporatewhistleblower
Omar Alshogre , refugee, public speaker, and project manager with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, shares the wrenching story of his three years as a political prisoner in the worst of Syria’s prisons. He discusses the role that extortion plays there, simultaneously delegitimizing the regime further and propping it up financially. Episode resources: Mentioned at (00:33) : The Syrian Emergency Task Force Mentioned at (00:45) : Omar's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , 11 Ma...
With the holiday travel season approaching, we’re revisiting a podcast episode featuring Paul Radu, the co-founder and co-executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Paul describes his team’s work in uncovering an international team of cash machine skimmers that ultimately skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars, largely from tourist hot spots. Travelers often don’t realize their accounts are being drained until after they return home. This episode was ori...
Walt Pavlo went to work at MCI at a time when telecoms were hungry for go-getters. It was the early 2000s, and Walt enjoyed the freedom and aggressive nature of a recently deregulated industry. But soon he realized that MCI’s most lucrative customers were also its flakiest, and the pressure was on to manage millions of bad debt that accumulated on the books. In this episode, Walt explains how he concocted a fake-loan scheme that netted him money far beyond his dreams — and yet how hollow it felt...
Retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell joins the podcast to describe the review he was commissioned to undertake of Hockey Canada’s organizational structure in the aftermath of a sexual assault scandal that shook confidence in the sport in 2018.
In his mid-20s, Chuck Collins made a fateful choice. The great-grandson of Oscar Meyer, and thus an heir to part of the meatpacker’s family fortune, Chuck was skeptical of the riches (some $500,000 in 1986 dollars). He didn’t want to perpetuate the imbalances he saw dynastic wealth creating in society. Rather than live off the interest, or to give a portion to charity, Chuck gave away the entire inheritance, and thus embarked on a most unusual sort of normal life. In this episode, Chuck explains...
The sudden ascent of Mohammed bin Salman from an obscure royal heir to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia — the country’s de facto ruler — has fascinated Jonathan Rugman, an author and longtime correspondent in the Middle East. Jonathan’s latest BBC documentary, “The Kingdom,” traces MBS’s life from an unruly youth to a series of Machiavellian maneuvers to cut ahead of cousins and uncles in the line of royal succession. Jonathan’s reporting illuminates a brash but secretive young autocrat whose we...
For more than 20 years, Paul Schervish surveyed many of the richest people in America for a long-running study on how the wealthy view the world and themselves. In this episode, another in our series on extreme wealth, Paul explains how his research and his early years spent as a priest inform his understanding of wealth and its potential to improve the world. Applying sociological and religious scholarship to the question of how what to do with money — and by extension, what to do with the rich...
Sir William Browder (“Bill”), a financier turned justice advocate, is our guest for this episode of our ongoing series on extreme wealth. Bill has been the engine behind the Magnitsky Act, a law that for the past 12 years has empowered governments to seize the assets of foreign leaders who abuse human rights — a significant countermeasure against corruption and atrocity that has exasperated Vladimir Putin and oligarchs in Russia, where Bill was once a leading foreign investor. His experience wor...
The author and philanthropist Jennifer Risher continues our series on extreme wealth by telling the story of her ear-popping rise from a middle-class Microsoft employee in the early ‘90s to an unexpected multimillionaire. The stock options she accrued with her husband, David — a fellow Microsoft employee who went on to join Amazon and who is now the CEO of Lyft — gave Jennifer immediate entry to a world of privilege that, as the child of a working-class household, she’d never expected to join. H...
In this episode — another in our series on extreme wealth — the journalist Steve Fishman discusses his reporting on Bernie Madoff and the collapse of Madoff’s $65 billion ponzi scheme. Steve doggedly pursued the story even after the financier was sent to a federal prison in North Carolina. Eventually the two men connected for a series of phone interviews that gave Steve a unique insight into the truths and lies that enabled Madoff to con investors at an industrial scale. Steve explains that gree...
This week we debut a special project within Bribe, Swindle or Steal: single-topic episodes that focus on extreme wealth. For years Alexandra Wrage has worked on corporate compliance and anti-corruption efforts, a field that provides a front-row view into human corruptibility. In these episodes, she digs into the practical, philosophical, political, and even spiritual roots of why people risk everything—from scandal to criminal charges—for the allure of money, even when all of their material need...
