Indulging Kleptocracy

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).

• 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

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.