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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political corruption
THE SUNDAY TIMES NO 2 BESTSELLER ** THE NEW YORK TIMES NO 1
BESTSELLER 'More explosive, compulsive and gasp-inducingly,
spine-tinglingly, mouth-dryingly, heart-poundingly thrilling than
any fiction I have read for years, but it is all true' Stephen Fry
'Mind-blowing...Browder's battle for justice is at times
terrifying, at times deeply touching' Catherine Belton 'A
jaw-dropping expose by Putin's anti-corruption nemesis' Daily
Telegraph Following his explosive international bestseller Red
Notice, Bill Browder returns with another gripping thriller
chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin's number one enemy by
exposing Putin's campaign to steal and launder hundreds of billions
of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way. When Bill
Browder's young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to
death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life's mission to go
after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step
of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax
refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his
team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the
Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they
were shocked to discovered that Vladimir Putin himself was a
beneficiary of the crime. As law enforcement agencies began
freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up
honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities,
murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top
lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down. Putin will
stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, it
was Browder's campaign to expose Putin's corruption that prompted
Russia's intervention in the 2016 US presidential election. At once
a financial caper, an international adventure and a passionate plea
for justice, Freezing Order is a timely and stirring morality tale
about how one man can take on one of the most ruthless villains in
the world.
Corruption takes many different forms and the systems that enable
it are complex and challenging. To best understand corruption, one
needs to examine how it operates in practice. Understanding
Corruption tells the story of how corruption happens in the real
world, illustrated through detailed case studies of the many
different types of corruption that span the globe. Each case study
follows a tried and tested analytical approach that provides key
insights into the workings of corruption and the measures best used
to tackle it. The case studies examined include examples of
corporate bribery, political corruption, facilitation payments,
cronyism, state capture, kleptocracy, asset recovery, offshore
secrecy, reputation laundering and unexplained wealth, and actors
include businesses, governments, politicians, governing bodies and
public servants.
In recent years hundreds of high-profile 'free speech' incidents
have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann
Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable
protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents
are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance
towards conservative views. But this response is not the
spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker
element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives,
and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow
the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and
ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist
celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these
controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities
and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs
deep. We need to abandon the 'campus free speech' narrative and
instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous
network from our universities.
This is the story of how a small island on the edge of Europe
became one of the world's major tax havens. From global
corporations such as Apple and Google, to investment bankers and
mainstream politicians, those taking advantage of Ireland's
pro-business tax laws and shadow banking system have amassed untold
riches at enormous social cost to ordinary people at home and
abroad. Tax Haven Ireland uncovers the central players in this
process and exposes the coverups employed by the Irish state, with
the help of accountants, lawyers and financial services companies.
From the lucrative internet porn industry to corruption in the
property market, this issue distorts the economy across the state
and in the wider international system, and its history runs deep,
going back the country's origins as a British colonial outpost.
Today, in the wake of Brexit and in the shadow of yet another
economic crash, what can be done to prevent such dangerous
behaviour and reorganise our economies to invest in the people? Can
Ireland - and all of us - build an alternative economy based on
fairness and democratic values?
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