Welcome back to the podcast, bribed, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge. Today we're talking about the relatively new trend of laundering money through real estate in Africa.

My guest is Hilary Mossberg. Hillary is Director of Illicit finance policy at the Century. The Sentry is an

investigative and policy team that follows dirty money connected to African war criminals and

transnational war profiteers. It seeks to shut those benefiting from violence out of the international

financial system, countering the main drivers of conflict and creating new leverage for peace,

human rights, and good governance.

Hillary, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much.

The Sentry, your organization came out with a report in July that addresses in great detail

the increasing use of real estate in African cities to launder money that's been looted by kleptocrats.

I think we're all pretty familiar. And I know we've covered it on this podcast with the use

of real estate in London, certainly in Vancouver, New York and elsewhere. But this is happening

now in Nairobi, Kampala, Cape Town, all over the continent. You spent eight years at Treasury in the Office of Terrorist

Financing and Financial Crimes, and so have real insight into what's at play here. Can you talk us

through what you found, sort of summarized the report for us? As you very rightly pointed out, there are major cities in the world that

have so like recognized hotbeds for these kleptocracy tours, Miami, Geneva, Paris, London,

Dubai, Vancouver, as you said, of course, New York. But they're not the only cities in which

corrupt officials house their waltz, of course. So what we uncovered

was a much lower profile tactic used by corrupt African officials, these lavish real estate purchases,

as you say, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kampala, Vinteluk, Nairobi that allow these kleptor-cadic

officials to stash their ill-gotten gains in their own backyards, essentially.

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