BRIBE, SWINDLE
OR STEAL

PODCAST

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Join host Alexandra Addison, President & Founder of TRACE, on Bribe, Swindle or Steal as she explores the world of financial crime—corruption, fraud, money laundering and sanctions—and what motivates people to break the law, how wrongdoers cover their tracks and what can be done to put a stop to the looting through interviews with experts in the field.

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September 3, 2025

Corruption, Sanctions and Putin's War Regime

This is a powerful session from the 2022 TRACE London Forum featuring Leonid Volkov, former Chief of Staff to Alexei Navalny and Political Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). Leonid discusses the role of corruption in Putin's Russia as well as the impact of sanctions and the toll that rampant corruption is taking on Russia.

This episode was originally published on 5 October 2022.

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August 27, 2025

"Why They Do It"

Eugene Soltes, Author, and Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, describes his fascinating research into what motivates white collar criminals and how distance from their victims makes it easier.

This episode was originally published on 30 August 2017.

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August 20, 2025

Effective Compliance Training

Karen Benson, Senior Counsel, Legal, at Energizer Holdings, shares a broad range of tips on how to build a targeted, innovative training program that keeps employs interested and engaged.

This episode was originally published on 15 May 2019.

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August 13, 2025

DEI Progress and Setbacks: What Compliance Professionals Need to Know

This week's podcast features an excellent presentation by Misti Mukherjee, founder and managing member of Extensio Law. Misti addresses the shifting field of diversity, equity and inclusion—including recent changes to the law—and emphasizes the critical importance of this work alongside the need to approach it with intentionality and discipline.

This episode was originally published on 5 August 2024.

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August 6, 2025

How Companies Get Caught

Chuck Duross, Global Co-Chair of the FCPA and Global Anti-Corruption Practice at Morrison Foerster, and former head of the DOJ's FCPA unit, discusses lures, stings, wiretaps and INTERPOL Red Notices.

This episode was originally published on 7 March 2018.

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July 23, 2025

Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

Author, academic and former compliance professional, Alison Taylor joins the podcast to talk about her compelling book, "Higher Ground". She describes the contradictions inherent in companies that talk about "doing well by doing good" and explains why corporate reputation management can't be an end in itself and how trying to do less can be the best strategy. "You don't have to join every conversation".

This episode was originally published on 14 February 2024.

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June 18, 2025

Encouraging and Protecting Whistleblowers

This week, we're listening in on Alexandra Wrage's keynote presentation at a Whistleblowers and Public Integrity conference hosted by the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute (VACI). She addresses the incredible personal price that whistleblowers pay when they're driven to expose misconduct, explores how we can begin to shift the tone of the discussion around reporting and notes how difficult it is to uncover financial crime without whistleblowers.

This episode was originally published on 16 November 2022.

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June 4, 2025

Daphne Caruana Galizia: Her Work, Her Murder and the Chance for Justice

Paul Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist at the Financial Times and Author of "A Death in Malta", joins the podcast to talk about the work of his mother, Daphne, the growing danger she perceived as her investigations reached the highest circles of power in Malta, and now the criminal proceedings against the two men who killed her. Paul also discusses the Daphne Foundation and the incredible journalistic community that worked together, again, to prove that killing a journalist won't kill their story.

This episode was originally published on 12 October 2022.

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May 28, 2025

Collaborative Investigative Journalism Without Borders

At the TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting award ceremony last month, former prosecutor and National Observer columnist Sandy Garossino led a conversation with ICIJ's Spencer Woodman, Bellingcat's Aric Toler, and 2022 Prize winners Hans Peterson Hammer of Göteborgs-Posten and Lilia Saúl Rodriguez of the OCCRP. They discuss the evolution, impact and future of cross-border collaborative investigative journalism.

This episode was originally published on 20 July 2022.

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May 14, 2025

Maria Ressa on Holding the Line

Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa joins the podcast to talk about corruption, disinformation and how to stand up to a dictator.

This podcast was originally published on February 22, 2023.

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May 7, 2025

How Corruption Undermines Elections

Dr. Magnus Ohman of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) joins the podcast to discuss how corruption undermines free and fair elections. He discusses his recent publication "Vote for Free: A Global Guide for Citizen Monitoring of Campaign Finance," which provides an eight-step model for civil society organizations seeking to monitor campaign finance.

This episode was originally published on 30 November 2022.

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April 30, 2025

Shattered Families, a Refugee Crisis and the United States' Diminished Reputation as a Beacon to Newcomers

Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody describe with passion their work with the International Rescue Committee. They tell us what America as a haven means to them and mourn the news that 545 children separated from their parents on the US southern border cannot be restored to their parents. They conclude with a fervent appeal to Americans to turn out to vote in this election.

This episode was originally published in October 2020.

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March 12, 2025

A Syrian-Libyan Human Smuggling Scheme

As Syria struggles to get on its feet after decades under the tyrannical father-son Assad regime, we're revisiting a story from 2024 when those desperate to leave Syria were preyed upon by a human smuggling ring. The story was brought to light by Mahmoud Elsobky, one of the two winners of the 2024 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting.

This episode was originally published on 10 July 2024.

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March 5, 2025

"Rigged: America, Russia and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference"

We are revisiting an episode from 2020 with David Shimer. David discusses his book that reviews the century of covert election interference by Russia and the U.S., the known impact of Russian meddling in 2016, and their growing capacity to interfere in future elections.

This episode was originally published on 22 September 2020.

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February 12, 2025

FCPA Year in Review (2024)

This podcast is based on TRACE's recent Year in Review webinar with Kate Atkinson. Kate is a Member and the Chair of Miller & Chevalier, based in their DC office, and she reviews for us the FCPA highlights for 2024.

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February 5, 2025

Trump Hotel - Baku: Adam Davidson

We're reposting our 2017 podcast with Adam Davidson of the New Yorker who joined the podcast to talk about his research into the baffling Trump Hotel deal in Baku.

This episode was originally published on 14 June 2017.

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January 29, 2025

"White House Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency Into a Business" (Last Time)

In light of last week's inauguration, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast episode with Dan Alexander, author and senior editor at Forbes, discussing his book about Trump's business deals with foreign entities, including one very strange deal with the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.

This episode was originally published on 7 October 2020.

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January 22, 2025

Understanding Trump's Executive Order on the Civil Service (It's Much More Serious Than It Sounds)

This inauguration week, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast on President Trump's assault on the civil service. In this episode, Harvard law professor, Matthew Stephenson, provides some context for understanding Trump's executive order on the civil service and then lists the three primary threats it poses for corruption. A more detailed discussion can be found on his Global Anticorruption Blog.

This episode was originally published on 4 November 2020.

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January 15, 2025

Governance in Space

Our guest today, Dr. Rebecca Connolly, joins us to discuss her work on the legal governance of outer space relating to militarization, security and commercialization, drawing some interesting parallels to the law of the sea and making it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done.

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January 8, 2025

Navigating the Greenlash: Can boards still lead on climate change?"

Karina Litvack joins the podcast to share her insights into climate governance based on her extensive board experience in the oil and gas sector and her role as the Founding Chair of the Climate Governance Initiative.

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December 18, 2024

Our Favorite Wine Fraudster

As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan's audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire.

This episode was originally published on 20 December 2017.

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December 11, 2024

The DOJ's New Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program

Patrick Gushue, the Department of Justice's Acting Director of its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, joins the podcast to discuss the program, uptake to date, who is eligible and key considerations as to timing and whistleblower involvement in the misconduct. More information about the pilot program is available at justice.gov/corporatewhistleblower

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December 9, 2024

Profiting From Human Rights Atrocities in Syrian Prisons

Omar Alshogre, refugee, public speaker, and project manager with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, shares the wrenching story of his three years as a political prisoner in the worst of Syria's prisons. He discusses the role that extortion plays there, simultaneously delegitimizing the regime further and propping it up financially.

Episode resources:

This episode was originally published on 9 June 2021.

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December 4, 2024

An International ATM Skimming Scheme

With the holiday travel season approaching, we're revisiting a podcast episode featuring Paul Radu, the co-founder and co-executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Paul describes his team's work in uncovering an international team of cash machine skimmers that ultimately skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars, largely from tourist hot spots. Travelers often don't realize their accounts are being drained until after they return home.

This episode was originally published on 9 June 2020.

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November 20, 2024

Extreme Wealth – Episode 8: Walt Pavlo and the Empty Temptations of Fraud

Walt Pavlo went to work at MCI at a time when telecoms were hungry for go-getters. It was the early 2000s, and Walt enjoyed the freedom and aggressive nature of a recently deregulated industry. But soon he realized that MCI's most lucrative customers were also its flakiest, and the pressure was on to manage millions of bad debt that accumulated on the books. In this episode, Walt explains how he concocted a fake-loan scheme that netted him money far beyond his dreams — and yet how hollow it felt, right up until the moment it all came crashing down.

Walt Pavlo is a nationally recognized speaker who writes for Forbes and NYU Law School on white-collar crime and criminal justice. He founded the firm Prisonology in 2014 as a consulting firm to support federal criminal defense attorneys by providing experts who have retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He is the co-author of "Stolen Without a Gun: Confessions from Inside History's Biggest Accounting Fraud, the Collapse of MCI WorldCom," which covers his stint working in the company's billing department and committing fraud.

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