Tom Burgis on The Rise of Kleptocracy

11/17/20 • 46 min

In today’s episode I speak with Tom Burgis, an investigations correspondent with the Financial Times, and author of two courageous books: The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth and the recently released Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World.

I strongly encourage you to buy copies of Tom’s books, read them, and share them with others.

Why?

Because as you’ll hear in this podcast, the themes his books cover constitute an existential threat to democratic institutions and governance — and the rule of law — globally.

They’re absolutely riveting yarns, full of intrigue and consequences.

And my hope is that if more people read Tom’s work, then we’ll stand a better chance of resisting the precipitous slide into kleptocracy that endangers us all.

Courage is contagious.

My discussion with Tom covers:

The dots connecting The Looting Machine and Kleptopia.
The story of Mukhtar Ablyazov — a Kazakh billionaire whom some say is a freedom fighter, some say is a fraudster, and some say maybe he’s both.
The complicity of U.S. and UK professional services firms in facilitating the activities and laundering the funds and reputations of kleptocrats.
Some mistaken assumptions behind the ‘convergence’ thesis.
How citizens can keep Kleptopia in check and revivify democracy.
John Kenneth Galbraith’s notion of ‘the bezzle’ and where ‘the bezzle’ is biggest now.
And, what the rise of Substack and the proliferation of journalists going solo or direct-to-consumer imports for the future of investigative journalism.

I’m fired up about this episode, and I hope you will be, too.

If you enjoy the Portico Podcast, please share it with friends, colleagues, and / or your connections on social media. Thanks!

This podcast was recorded in November 2020.

I strongly encourage you to buy copies of Tom’s books, read them, and share them with others.

Why?

Because as you’ll hear in this podcast, the themes his books cover constitute an existential threat to democratic institutions and governance — and the rule of law — globally.

They’re absolutely riveting yarns, full of intrigue and consequences.

And my hope is that if more people read Tom’s work, then we’ll stand a better chance of resisting the precipitous slide into kleptocracy that endangers us all.

Courage is contagious.

My discussion with Tom covers:

The dots connecting The Looting Machine and Kleptopia.
The story of Mukhtar Ablyazov — a Kazakh billionaire whom some say is a freedom fighter, some say is a fraudster, and some say maybe he’s both.
The complicity of U.S. and UK professional services firms in facilitating the activities and laundering the funds and reputations of kleptocrats.
Some mistaken assumptions behind the ‘convergence’ thesis.
How citizens can keep Kleptopia in check and revivify democracy.
John Kenneth Galbraith’s notion of ‘the bezzle’ and where ‘the bezzle’ is biggest now.
And, what the rise of Substack and the proliferation of journalists going solo or direct-to-consumer imports for the future of investigative journalism.

I’m fired up about this episode, and I hope you will be, too.

If you enjoy the Portico Podcast, please share it with friends, colleagues, and / or your connections on social media. Thanks!

This podcast was recorded in November 2020.

Previous Episode

Monica Brand Engel on Fintech & Financial Inclusion

In the third episode of The Portico Podcast I speak with Monica Brand Engel — a co-founding Partner at Quona Capital, a venture capital firm focused on fintech for inclusion in emerging markets.

If you’ve looked into EM fintech, you’ve probably come across Quona and their portfolio companies.

For example:

Sokowatch in East Africa, a working capital provider and last-mile distributor of fast-moving consumer goods to informal retailers;
Coins in the Philippines, a mobile, branchless, blockchain-based platform that provides unbanked and underbanked customers with direct access to basic financial services (and which was acquired by Go-Jek in 2019);
Or Konfio, a digital banking and software platform for SMEs in Mexico, which received a $100m investment from Softbank as well as a $100m secured credit facility from Goldman Sachs last year.

I was excited to get Monica on the podcast because she has built a career in two of the most compelling themes around: financial inclusion and financial technology.

Our discussion opens with her walking us through her career trajectory. We then talk about the convergence between philanthropic and commercial investment across emerging markets; the commonalities and idiosyncrasies across the markets in which Quona invests; the quality of fintech entrepreneurship in EM; the prospects for technological and business model innovation to migrate from emerging markets to the United States and Western Europe; and the biggest obstacles fintech startups encounter as they attempt to scale, among other topics.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

This podcast was recorded in October 2020.

Next Episode

Weijian Shan on Leverage and Turnarounds in Asia

In this episode, I speak with Weijian Shan, the chairman and CEO of PAG — a leading Asia-focused alternative investments firm with ~ $40 billion of assets under management.

Prior to PAG, Shan was a co-managing partner of TPG Asia (formerly known as Newbridge Capital).

It was a real honor to have Shan on the podcast, as his life story is remarkable.

If you haven’t read his memoir Out of the Gobi yet, I heartily encourage you to do so. It’s an extraordinary book that recounts Shan’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution — particularly the six years he spent doing hard labor in a re-education camp — and the transformative impact that the normalization of U.S.-China relations and Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms had on China generally, and on Shan in particular.

And he’s just written a new book called Money Games, which details the rescue of one of Korea’s largest banks on the heels of the Asian Financial Crisis.

I reached out to Shan after finishing Money Games because — in addition to providing one of the few narratives to detail a private equity transaction from sourcing through exit — I think his book offers tremendous insights into the art of private equity deal-making, and I wanted to explore some of the themes it raises.

In addition to his books, Shan and I discuss the importance of stakeholder analysis when structuring private equity investments; whether there is a problem of too much debt in the Chinese economy; SOE reform, and the prospects for China’s economic rebalancing toward domestic consumption; the institutionalization of private equity in Asia; and, his advice for younger people who wish to pursue a career in private equity, among other topics.

Shan’s thoughtful comments prompted me to rethink some of my own analyses and assumptions. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you will, too.

This podcast was recorded in December 2020.