Bribe, Swindle or Steal

Dec 17 2024 440 ep. 25 mins 4.5k

Bribe, Swindle or Steal Podcast artwork

Alexandra Wrage, president of TRACE, interviews luminaries in the field of financial crime, including bribery, fraud, money-laundering, insider trading and sanctions. Each week, Alexandra and her guests will discuss who commits “white collar crime”, how it works and what is being done to stop it.

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Our Favorite Wine Fraudster

Dec 17 2024 37 mins

As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan’s audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire. This episode was originally published on 20 December 2017.

The DOJ’s New Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program

Dec 11 2024 28 mins

Patrick Gushue, the Department of Justice’s Acting Director of its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, joins the podcast to discuss the program, uptake to date, who is eligible and key considerations as to timing and whistleblower involvement in the misconduct. More information about the pilot program is available at justice.gov/corporatewhistleblower

Profiting From Human Rights Atrocities in Syrian Prisons

Dec 09 2024 43 mins

Omar Alshogre, refugee, public speaker, and project manager with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, shares the wrenching story of his three years as a political prisoner in the worst of Syria’s prisons. He discusses the role that extortion plays there, simultaneously delegitimizing the regime further and propping it up financially. Episode resources: Mentioned at (00:33): The

An International ATM Skimming Scheme

Dec 03 2024 23 mins

With the holiday travel season approaching, we’re revisiting a podcast episode featuring Paul Radu, the co-founder and co-executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Paul describes his team’s work in uncovering an international team of cash machine skimmers that ultimately skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars, largely from tourist hot

Extreme Wealth – Episode 8: Walt Pavlo and the Empty Temptations of Fraud

Nov 19 2024 31 mins

Walt Pavlo went to work at MCI at a time when telecoms were hungry for go-getters. It was the early 2000s, and Walt enjoyed the freedom and aggressive nature of a recently deregulated industry. But soon he realized that MCI’s most lucrative customers were also its flakiest, and the pressure was on to manage millions of bad debt that accumulated on the books. In this episode, Walt

Hockey Canada’s Governance Review

Nov 12 2024 31 mins

Retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell joins the podcast to describe the review he was commissioned to undertake of Hockey Canada’s organizational structure in the aftermath of a sexual assault scandal that shook confidence in the sport in 2018.

Extreme Wealth – Episode 7: Chuck Collins and the Burdens of Dynastic Wealth

Nov 05 2024 26 mins

In his mid-20s, Chuck Collins made a fateful choice. The great-grandson of Oscar Meyer, and thus an heir to part of the meatpacker’s family fortune, Chuck was skeptical of the riches (some $500,000 in 1986 dollars). He didn’t want to perpetuate the imbalances he saw dynastic wealth creating in society. Rather than live off the interest, or to give a portion to charity, Chuck ga

Extreme Wealth – Episode 6: Jonathan Rugman and the Stunning Power Plays of MBS

Oct 30 2024 47 mins

The sudden ascent of Mohammed bin Salman from an obscure royal heir to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia — the country’s de facto ruler — has fascinated Jonathan Rugman, an author and longtime correspondent in the Middle East. Jonathan’s latest BBC documentary, “The Kingdom,” traces MBS’s life from an unruly youth to a series of Machiavellian maneuvers to cut ahead of

Extreme Wealth – Episode 5: Paul Schervish and the Spiritual Duality of Riches

Oct 22 2024 30 mins

For more than 20 years, Paul Schervish surveyed many of the richest people in America for a long-running study on how the wealthy view the world and themselves. In this episode, another in our series on extreme wealth, Paul explains how his research and his early years spent as a priest inform his understanding of wealth and its potential to improve the world. Applying sociological

Extreme Wealth - Episode 4: Bill Browder and the Pitiless Greed of Vladimir Putin

Oct 15 2024 35 mins

Sir William Browder (“Bill”), a financier turned justice advocate, is our guest for this episode of our ongoing series on extreme wealth. Bill has been the engine behind the Magnitsky Act, a law that for the past 12 years has empowered governments to seize the assets of foreign leaders who abuse human rights — a significant countermeasure against corruption and atrocity that