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

I'm Alexandra Braggie.

Today we're discussing the intersection of mercenaries and money laundering with a Libyan

backdrop.

My guest is Jody Vittori.

Jody is a non-resident scholar in the Democracy, Conflict,

and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Research. Her work

focuses on the many points of intersection between corruption, state fragility, illicit finance,

and U.S. national security, all topics of interest on this podcast, Jody, thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me.

I think what we both really want to talk about is this UN Security Council report released last month on Libya. Can you walk us through the report, perhaps starting with the mechanics,

and then we can turn to the substance.

This was part of a huge 500-page report that had bits and pieces of it had already been

leaked over time in the popular press, and so at some point the United Nations essentially

gave up and released the entire report. And the report covers a number of topics of who's

smuggling what into Libya, issues with the Libyan

Sovereign Wealth Fund, all sorts of activities that are related to violations of UN Security Council resolutions as they relate to Libya.

The part that's relevant here today is a large portion of the report is an in-depth investigation that comes about on this topic called Project Opus.

And this project is something that had started to leak into the press because in the very

end of June in 2019, in broad daylight and a port in Malta, a blacked-out zodiac boat with 20 men

suddenly shows up. And so it being Malta with a robust

investigative reporting, journalists there, and just the fact that it's Malta and it's small,

...