Money laundering is a global problem. It involves hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is proof that crime pays. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, money laundering can erode a nation's economy and it can adversely affect the global stability of financial markets. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the concept of money laundering was expanded to include the financing of terrorism. The basic idea behind this book is that if you don't know what you are looking for, you are not going to find it. By way of illustration, few people realise that cigarette smuggling, certain charitable organisations, internet solicitations, as well as investments in legitimate businesses have been used to finance terrorists. This book will help you figure out what to look for in terms of money laundering and financing terrorism, but it cannot provide all of the answers in an ever changing setting.

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. This is the story about how I made a choice.

'A fun history of political dishonesty' The Times In a history full of wit and acumen, Private Eye journalist Adam Macqueen dissects the gripping stories of the biggest political lies of the last half-century, from the cover-up of Churchill's stroke to Iraq's WMDs to Theresa May's announcement that she wouldn't be calling a snap election. Also covering a selection of Donald Trump's litany of untruths, other infamous lies from foreign shores, and lesser known British whoppers, this is the quintessential guide to dishonesty from our leaders.

Repeated corruption scandals and the efforts of the international political community to find ways to counteract them have compelled economists, anthropologists and political scientists to confront corruption as a subject for serious academic research. This textbook introduces students to the field of corruption analysis and the challenges facing its researchers. The book explores the definitional challenges, the problems of measurement and the methodologies that underpin the standard corruption indices. The key drivers of corrupt practice are identified and the arguments used to understand the causes of corruption are outlined. The book looks at what works in the fight against corruption, including international conventions and organizations, and policy initiatives at the national level. The role of third sector organizations, the so-called "anti-corruption industry" and the work of citizen activists and "armchair auditors" are also explored. Analysing Corruption provides an authoritative and engaging introduction to a subject that is the largest public policy challenge that the state faces in many parts of the world. It is suitable for courses in politics, public policy, public administration, development studies and anthropology. It will also be of value to those working in NGOs and charities helping to shape anti-corruption thinking.

In the spring of 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court will render a decision in the Wisconsin gerrymandering case that could have a revolutionary impact on American politics and how legislative representation is chosen. Gerrymandering! A Guide to Congressional Redistricting, Dark Money and the Supreme Court is a unique explanation to understand and act on the Court's decision, whatever it may be. After describing the importance of legislative representation, the book describes the anatomy of a redistricting n Pennsylvania. That is followed by a review of legislative redistricting in American history and the Supreme Court's role throughout. The book relates what has happened to the efforts to bring changes to redistricting through the legislatures, including the unseen but omnipresent use of dark money to oppose reforms. The penultimate chapter analyzes the Wisconsin case now pending in the Supreme Court and concludes that anyone relying on the Court's decision is relying on a firm maybe. Following the text is a Citizen's Toolbox with which readers throughout the country can evaluate the redistricting situation in their states. The Toolbox is replete with useful information gerrymandering. There are numerous books that tell how bad gerrymandering is, but my book is different, much different. Unlike the others, this book analyzes gerrymandering as developed through the force of history, the hardball politics of state legislatures and scantily disclosed campaign expenditures to maintain it, and the daunting legal challenge for those who want the Supreme Court to adopt a new national standard for determining when gerrymandering is unconstitutional as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The daunting challenges is to show the Court that a mathematical formula, such as the efficiency gap formula, is a valid method to measure violations of the 14th amendment's guarantee that every citizen be given equal protection of the law.

A gripping narrative of power, corruption and greed, The Mechanism is the true story of how a simple investigation into money laundering uncovered the biggest corruption scandal in human history.

When a small team of investigators discovered that a black market currency dealer was operating out of a Brazilian petrol station, they could never have imagined that their work would destroy the government and lead to the impeachment of two presidents. As the trail leads further and further into the centre of power, the search for the truth and pursuit of justice become ever more crucial.

Taut and riveting, with more plot twists than the most compelling political thriller, The Mechanism is an essential work of non-fiction that exposes the rottenness caused when politicians and big businesses believe they are above the law.

State failure is a central challenge to international peace and security in the post-Cold War era. Yet theorizing on the causes of state failure remains surprisingly limited. In State Erosion, Lawrence P. Markowitz draws on his extensive fieldwork in two Central Asian republics Tajikistan, where state institutions fragmented into a five-year civil war from 1992 through 1997, and Uzbekistan, which constructed one of the largest state security apparatuses in post-Soviet Eurasia to advance a theory of state failure focused on unlootable resources, rent seeking, and unruly elites.

In Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries with low capital mobility where resources cannot be extracted, concealed, or transported to market without state intervention local elites may control resources, but they depend on patrons to convert their resources into rents. Markowitz argues that different rent-seeking opportunities either promote the cooptation of local elites to the regime or incite competition over rents, which in turn lead to either cohesion or fragmentation. Markowitz distinguishes between weak states and failed states, challenges the assumption that state failure in a country begins at the center and radiates outward, and expands the resource curse argument to include cash crop economies, where mechanisms of state failure differ from those involved in fossil fuels and minerals. Broadening his argument to weak states in the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon) and Africa (Zimbabwe and Somalia), Markowitz shows how the distinct patterns of state failure in weak states with immobile capital can inform our understanding of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform."

Master story teller Marc Mappen applies a generational perspective to the gangsters of the Prohibition era--men born in the quarter century span from 1880 to 1905--who came to power with the Eighteenth Amendment.
On January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect in the United States, "outlawing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." A group of young criminals from immigrant backgrounds in cities around the nation stepped forward to disobey the law of the land in order to provide alcohol to thirsty Americans.
Today the names of these young men--Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond, Nucky Johnson--are more familiar than ever, thanks in part to such cable programs as "Boardwalk Empire." Here, Mappen strips way the many myths and legends from television and movies to describe the lives these gangsters lived and the battles they fought. Placing their criminal activities within the context of the issues facing the nation, from the Great Depression, government crackdowns, and politics to sexual morality, immigration, and ethnicity, he also recounts what befell this villainous group as the decades unwound.
Making use of FBI and other government files, trial transcripts, and the latest scholarship, the book provides a lively narrative of shootouts, car chases, courtroom clashes, wire tapping, and rub-outs in the roaring 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, and beyond. Mappen asserts that Prohibition changed organized crime in America. Although their activities were mercenary and violent, and they often sought to kill one another, the Prohibition generation built partnerships, assigned territories, and negotiated treaties, however short lived. They were able to transform the loosely associated gangs of the pre-Prohibition era into sophisticated, complex syndicates. In doing so, they inspired an enduring icon--the gangster--in American popular culture and demonstrated the nation's ideals of innovation and initiative.

'Brilliant observations on the anthropology of power. You will laugh aloud and you won't put it down' Daniel Kahneman In this eye-opening exploration of the human weakness for power, Daniel Levin takes us on a hilarious journey through the absurd world of our global elites, drawing unforgettable sketches of some of the puppets who stand guard. and the jugglers and conjurers employed within. Most spectacular of all, however, are the astonishing contortions performed by those closest to the top in order to maintain the illusion of integrity, decency, and public service. Based on the author's first-hand experiences of dealing with governments and political institutions around the world, Nothing but a Circus offers a rare glimpse of the conversations that happen behind closed doors, observing the appalling lengths that people go to in order to justify their unscrupulous choices, from Dubai to Luanda, Moscow to Beijing, and at the heart of the UN and the US government.

The relationship between government, virtue, and wealth has held a special fascination since Aristotle, and the importance of each frames policy debates today in both developed and developing countries. While it's clear that low-quality government institutions have tremendous negative effects on the health and wealth of societies, the criteria for good governance remain far from clear. In this pathbreaking book, leading political scientist Bo Rothstein provides a theoretical foundation for empirical analysis on the connection between the quality of government and important economic, political, and social outcomes. Focusing on the effects of government policies, he argues that unpredictable actions constitute a severe impediment to economic growth and development - and that a basic characteristic of quality government is impartiality in the exercise of power. This is borne out by cross-sectional analyses, experimental studies, and in-depth historical investigations. Timely and topical, "The Quality of Government" tackles such issues as political legitimacy, social capital, and corruption.

A deconstruction of the neoliberal placations about global capitalism, exposing the inequalities of global poverty "We're making headway on global poverty," trills Bill Gates. "Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues," reports the World Bank. "How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?" inquires The Economist. Seth Donnelly answers: "It didn't!" In fact, according to Donnelly, virtually nothing about these glad tidings proclaiming plummeting global poverty rates is true. It's just that trend-setting neoliberal experts and institutions need us to believe that global capitalism, now unfettered in the wake of the Cold War and bolstered by Information Technology, has ushered in a new phase of international human prosperity. This short book deconstructs the assumption that global poverty has fallen dramatically, and lays bare the spurious methods of poverty measurement and data on which the dominant prosperity narrative depends. Here is carefully researched documentation that global poverty--and the inequalities and misery that flourish within it--remains massive, afflicting the majority of the world's population. Donnelly goes further to analyze just how global poverty, rather than being reduced, is actually reproduced by the imperatives of capital accumulation on a global scale. Just as the global, environmental catastrophe cannot be resolved within capitalism, rooted as it is in contemporary mechanisms of exploitation and plunder, neither can human poverty be effectively eliminated by neoliberal "advances."

How have civil rights transformed racial politics in America? Connecting economic and social reforms to racial and class inequality, "Conjuring Crisis" counters the myth of steady race progress by analyzing how the federal government and local politicians have sometimes "reformed" politics in ways that have amplified racism in the post civil-rights era.

In the 1990s at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina, the city's dominant political coalition of white civic and business leaders had lost control of the city council. Amid accusations of racism in the police department, two white council members joined black colleagues in support of the NAACP's demand for an investigation. George Baca's ethnographic research reveals how residents and politicians transformed an ordinary conflict into a "crisis" that raised the specter of chaos and disaster. He explores new territory by focusing on the broader intersection of militarization, urban politics, and civil rights.

As the European Union moved in the 1990s to a unified market and stronger common institutions, most observers assumed that the changes would reduce corruption. Aspects of the stronger EU promised to preclude or at least reduce malfeasance: regulatory harmonization, freer trade, and privatization of publicly owned enterprises. Market efficiencies would render corrupt practices more visible and less common.

In The Best System Money Can Buy, Carolyn M. Warner systematically and often entertainingly gives the lie to these assumptions and provides a framework for understanding the persistence of corruption in the Western states of the EU. In compelling case studies, she shows that under certain conditions, politicians and firms across Europe, chose to counter the increased competition they faced due to liberal markets and political reforms by resorting to corruption. More elections have made ever-larger funding demands on political parties; privatization has proved to be a theme park for economic crime and party profit; firms and politicians collude in many areas where EU harmonization has resulted in a net reduction in law-enforcement powers; and state-led "export promotion" efforts, especially in the armaments, infrastructure, and energy sectors, have virtually institutionalized bribery.

The assumptions that corruption and modernity are incompatible or that Western Europe is somehow immune to corruption simply do not hold, as Warner conveys through colorful analyses of scandals in which large corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats engage in criminal activity in order to facilitate mergers and block competition, and in which officials accept private payments for public services rendered. At the same time, the book shows the extent to which corruption is driven by the very economic and political reforms thought to decrease it."

Angola is poised between a past marked by civil war and corruption, and a future of potential economic development. This book examines the post-Civil War period which began in 2002 and saw the rise of a corrupt ruling elite, as well as recent developments in the country. These include the efforts of the current President, João Lourenço, to reform the regime through political openness, economic growth and a crackdown on corruption. Rui Santos Verde analyses the country's recent history of corruption and the current attempts at reform in order to determine whether economic and political development is on the horizon for Angola, or whether these reforms are simply a move towards consolidating President Lourenço's personal power.

The definitive portrait of the powerful, corruption-ridden Teamsters union and its legendary president, Jimmy Hoffa-organizer, gangster, convict, and conspirator-with a new afterword by the author James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in twentieth-century America. His remarkable journey from young union organizer to all-powerful head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is an epic tale worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, jam-packed with intrigue, subterfuge, violence, and corruption. His successes were monumental, his fall truly spectacular, and his bizarre disappearance in the summer of 1975 remains one of the great mysteries in American history. Widely considered to be the definitive volume on the career and crimes of Jimmy Hoffa, The Hoffa Wars, by acclaimed investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, is an eye-opening, extensively researched account of the steady rise and fall of an ingenious, ambitious man who was instrumental in transforming a small union of seventy-five thousand truckers into the most powerful labor brotherhood in world. Shocking disclosures in Moldea's no-holds-barred account include the devil's bargain that put Hoffa and his union in the pockets of the Mob, Hoffa's role in the joint CIA-Mafia plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the deal Hoffa made with US president Richard Nixon that released the disgraced Teamster president from prison eight years early, and the truth behind Hoffa's eventual disappearance and likely murder. But perhaps the most startling revelation of all concerns the integral part Jimmy Hoffa played, in concert with underworld kingpins Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, in America's most terrible twentieth-century crime: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Paramilitaries, crime, and thousands of disappeared in official numbers - the so-called 'war on drugs' has perpetuated violence in parts of Latin America, at times precisely in regions of economic growth. Legal and illegal economy are difficult to distinguish. A failure of state institutions to provide security for its citizens does not sufficiently explain this. This book offers a detailed analysis of the role of the state in violence: To what extent and for whom do states produce order and disorder, by devising security policies within the 'fight against drugs'? Which social forces support and drive such policies? This first comparative study of Colombian and Mexican security policies employs state theory and critical political economy to understand recent dynamics of violence in both contexts. It highlights how the 'war on drugs' has exacerbated contradictions driven by a particular economic model, and simultaneously resorts to discourses which criminalize precisely those that this model has radically disadvantaged.

When towing the party line meant lying to the American people, brave government employees took to social media to share the inside scoop. Experiencing firsthand President Donald Trump's disregard for truth, rogue government employees took to social media as an outlet for anonymized outrage, fact-checking, and a call to action. The #ALTGOV Twitter movement subverted official statements to remind the American public that all was not well in the White House but that there was something they could do about it. This is the story of how the same social media technologies that fractured America have helped rogue government workers and concerned citizens work to keep it together. Government employees who were first disappointed in the 2016 election outcome and then horrified by things like a ban on Muslim immigrants, the repeal of Net Neutrality, the deletion of climate change information from EPA websites found themselves searching for a way to take a stand. Beginning with tweets from the parks about the Inauguration Day crowd, the #AltGov Twitter accounts offered followers context, truth, and opportunities to take real-world action to support human rights, privacy rights, and science. Followers say they offer hope. They've also faced challenges from their bosses in the government, from trolls and bots, and from each other. Amanda Sturgill offers the first real look behind the curtain as AltGov members struggled to work effectively with others across a spectrum of goals and motivations, while facing their own fears of being discovered or even inadvertently causing the harm they are trying to forestall. The AltGov movement shows us that social media is more than a megaphone-it's a way for everyday people to live out democratic ideals and make a difference.