PROJECT LAUNCH

With Oliver Bullough and Mark Galeotti

5.30-7.00pm, Wednesday 27 February, 2019

Location: Amory 128

Russian and Eurasian organised crime has a rich history entwined with business and the state.  However, in the last 20 years the ‘vory’ appear to have gone global in their links to the country’s transnational business networks.  The links between oligarchs and organised crime, numerous cases of money laundering, and even allegations of their involvement in state-sanctioned assassinations in the UK and elsewhere lead to a series of questions.  What is the relationship between organised crime and the state in Russia?  How are Russian criminal organizations connected to the wider economy of industry and oligarchs?  How are they serviced by white collar professionals both in Russia and overseas?  Has London got a particular problem with Russian organised crime?  What are the economic, political and security implications of Russian organized crime for the West? Marking the launch of a new Anti-Corruption Evidence project based at the University of Exeter, we welcome two leading authors and public commentators on these questions: Mark Galeotti, author of The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia(Yale University Press, 2018) and Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back (Profile books, 2018).  The event will be chaired by John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter , the principal investigator of the new project.  Books by the participants will be on sale at the event courtesy of Blackwells’.

SPEAKERS:

Mark Galeotti is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a 2018-19 Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. A specialist in Russian politics. history and security affairs, his most recent books are The Vory: Russia’s super mafia (Yale, 2018) and We Need to Talk About Putin (Penguin, 2019). Educated at Cambridge and the LSE, he has been head of history at Keele University, professor of global affairs at New York University, a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (USA), MGIMO (Russia) and Charles University (Czech Republic).

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and author from Wales, who specialises in writing about Russia and financial crime. He has written books about the North Caucasus and Russia’s demographic crisis, and his journalism appears in the Guardian, Prospect, the New York Times and elsewhere. His latest book is Moneyland, why crooks and thieves now rule the world and how to take it back.

CHAIR:

John Heathershaw is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter and the co-author of Dictators Without Borders (Yale, 2017). He is principal investigator of the Gloabal Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence programme project ‘Testing and evidencing the effectiveness of beneficial ownership checks: investigating the laundering of monies and reputations by African and Central Asian elites’.