by John Heatheshaw, Tena Prelec and Tom Mayne (on Democracy for Sale by Peter Geoghegan)
April 5, 2025
The global effort to counter kleptocracy is at a turning point. In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump has rolled back decades of US anti-corruption initiatives.
Trump has suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, undermined the Department of Justice’s ‘KleptoCapture’ task force, and moved to cut funding for journalists and civil society groups investigating corruption.
Most strikingly, the US president has proposed replacing the existing investor visa program with a ‘gold card’ scheme that would grant residency and a path to citizenship for anyone willing to invest $5 million—potentially including the Russian oligarchs he recently called “very nice people.”
All of this signals a major shift: while David Lammy has promised to bring “the golden age of money laundering” in Britain to an end, the US appears set to make a relaxed attitude to corruption explicit policy. At the same time Dubai and other ‘new financial centres’ have emerged as hubs for the global super-rich.
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