Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today we're talking about transnational

crime and corruption in post-Soviet Eurasia. My guest is Alexander Kupitazi, an expert in the

field and lecturer at King's College London.

I first became familiar with Alexander's work through his excellent chapter on Georgia

in Transitions to Good Governance, Creating Virtuous Circles of Anti-Corruption, which we've

discussed on this pod previously with Michael Johnston.

Alexander, thank you for joining me.

Thanks a lot.

Start by describing for us specific challenges that you see with respect to these post-Soviet

Eurasian states. Why are they different?

Well, all these large and quantitative studies, they show that usually, if you're a post-communist

country, you happen to be a bit more corrupt than the rest.

So the likelihoods of being corrupting crises together with the communist past.

So there's a lot of so-called past dependency going down there.

The way that Soviet system function, the way that Soviet state was run, that collusion between formal and informal,

that is still a huge problem in the region. But also, you get lots of regional variations,

and it's quite interesting because, I mean, it's kind of laboratory. You have the Soviet pasts

that all 15 countries share, and then after the breakup of Soviet Union, each had their own paths influenced by a specific

regional or country-specific variables or factors.

So you have rentier states, oil and gas-rich countries that became partial dependent on the income from this oil and gas and the elites

are kind of living off from these natural resources. You get Central Asia because with proximity

to Afghanistan, drugs has been a hugely corrupting factor. But natural resources is also

...