Okay, we're live. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey. Investigates on today's show of a very special guest. His name is Casey Michelle, and he's publishing a book in November 2021. The title of the book is American Cliptockrosy, how the U.S. created the world's greatest money laundering scheme in history. Really fascinating book, read through it, very timely. A lot of names that as you see in the news

Manafort some other interesting cares and I learned a lot about the book there are a lot of

details and elements about the American financial system and its history that I didn't know

until I read this so I was really delighted to read through this again the author's name is

Casey Michelle so Casey are you there yes I am here will it's great to be here

thanks so much for having me awesome well thanks for agreeing to the interview for people who may not have

heard your name or background can you talk about what your kind of background journalistic background

and what led you to write this book american kleptocracy yeah sure uh a great question certainly

something i ask myself probably more than is is healthy I am a journalist by training. I'm currently based in New York. I write for a number of outlets primarily on illicit finance, on money laundering, on transnational or international, dirty money flows, international corruption, and then the intersection of

those funds, that money, the process of laundering that money, again, the transition

and transformation of dirty money into clean, where does that money end up?

How does it affect us? How does it enter into and upend in many cases, political systems, both at home and abroad?

How does it affect everything from national security to electoral legitimacy to wealth inequality?

All of these different elements that I have been working on and riding on and covering for a number of outlets,

Washington Post, the Atlantic, foreign policy, foreign affairs,

and the like the last few years.

All of that came together in this book.

So this book is in one sense a culmination of so much of what I

and certainly some other talented journalists that I've had the good fortune to work

alongside and to build off of have been working

on for the last few years. But maybe even beyond that, you know, maybe you can tell from my,

my accent. I'm a proud American, born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I went to school down in

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