Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and my guest today is Patrick Alley.

He is one of the three founders of Global Witness, an investigative organization established in 1993,

and dedicated to routing out corruption and environmental and human rights abuses

around the world. Patrick continues to work with the organization as a member of the board.

We're talking today about his great new book, Very Bad People, The Inside Story of the Fight

Against the World's Network of Corruption. The book recounts Patrick's experiences following the money, going undercover

in the world's most dangerous places, and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Patrick,

thank you for joining me. Thank you very much for asking me. It's a pleasure to be with you.

The book is a bit cheeky in places. You don't have a lot of patience with those involved in financial and

environmental crime. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to this work?

I came to this work through various unpredictable route in my 20s. I was in the construction

industry and very, very bored. But it was in the early 90s, I volunteered for an environmental organization that investigated things

like the illegal ivory trade, for example, because my passion, growing passion on environmental

issues.

And there I met two other people, Sharmy and Gooch and Simon Taylor.

We were all volunteers initially at the Environmental Investigation Agency, as it was called.

We got on, we spent time in the pubs of London, swapping stories, and we were all, by complete

coincidence, very interested in what was happening in Cambodia at that time. And what was happening

in Cambodia at that time was very big news. We're going back to 92, 93,

when the United Nations was mounting its biggest ever peacekeeping operation up to that time

to bring an end to decades-long civil war, which then was being fought between the notorious

and genocidal Khmer Rouge rebel movement and a newly

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