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

I'm Alexandra Ragi.

Today's podcast is a chance to hear from three phenomenal authors who joined me for a panel

at the Annapolis Book Festival over the weekend.

Oliver Bolo joined us from Wales.

He's a journalist specializing in financial crime and the former Soviet Union. He'll be talking about his fantastic book,

Moneyland, the inside story of the crooks and kleptocrats who rule the world. Tom Burgess

joined us from London, where he's an investigative reporter and longstanding member of the Financial

Times Investigations

team. Tom will be talking today about his most recent book, which was published in September of last year,

Kleptopia, How Dirty Money is Conquering the World. Sarah Chase joined us from West Virginia.

Sarah's career path has taken her from reporting for NPR to on-the-ground advisor to then chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, before writing several excellent books, including most

recently, on corruption in America and what is at stake. These books read like gritty spy novels

with political intrigue and some outsized bond villains. I recommend all three of them highly and can promise

you that they'll enrich your understanding of the complex global scourge of corruption without

being in any way duplicative. My thanks to the Annapolis Book Festival and to Oliver, Tom, and

Sarah. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having us. Sarah, I'm going to start with you.

Can you set the scene for us?

What is the big problem that we're talking about?

What I'd love you to bear in mind as you listen to some of the very specific stories and

quite hair-raising ones that you'll be hearing today, is that I think we have a tendency

...