The undersigned encourages and supports any and all serious research effort on kleptocracy. Academic and/or personal research on the topic can draw on decades of intensive experience in analytical and research methods. Proposals for joint projects intended for publication will be considered.
Albert Nasr

The danger of countries that have fallen to authoritarian kleptocrats is real, and the danger extends beyond the country’s borders. Indeed, most of the threats our rule-of-law world faces emerge from countries operating without rule of law that are sinks of corruption, autocracy and lawlessness.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

When all basic branches of that system of governance (3+2) coalesce to form one governing whole whose overriding objective is to facilitate and legalize the looting of communal wealth. This requires that all basic functions of governance be firmly controlled by the looters and their underlings.

Kleptocracy is a system of governance whereby all the State’s power and functional structures are controlled by thieves and are designed to enable the systematic and seamless transfer of communal wealth to those who control those State structures.. Whereas corruption could be a more or less prevalent occurrence within an otherwise fairly acceptable system of governance. With political will, such a system could abate corruption, through its power structures, and to an extent commensurate with political will.

To sum up, kleptocracy is a destroyer of nations, whereas corruption – heinous as it is –  is an indictable, prosecutable, and eradicable crime when perpetrated within a system of acceptably good governance.

Kleptocracy being the rule of thieves, it is inconceivable for a kleptocratic system to indict itself through the prosecution of those who benefit from it and defend it. By the very definition of a kleptocracy, the rule of thieves cannot also be the rule of law as that concept is understood – notionally at least – in a democracy. Consequently, there is no judicial recourse to local courts of law to right a wrong perpetrated by kleptocrats.

The absence of judicial recourse added to the fact that kleptocrats perpetrate life-threatening crimes against the whole citizenry of a given jurisdiction render kleptocracy a criminal venture akin to mass murder. As such, it calls for international intervention to end it and prosecute perpetrators in international courts of justice.

International law enforcement agencies are well aware of the “cooperation” mechanisms that tie kleptocrats to world crime syndicates maintain. Expressed succinctly, cash-rich kleptocrats need the crime underworld’s connections to shelter their illicit wealth. Laundromat services come at a price, namely the provision of equally criminal services in exchange.

There were very few instances worldwide of a kleptocracy being toppled by homegrown revolution. Fewer still are instances where the intervention of a foreign power has aimed at toppling a kleptocracy. More evident are the diktats of realpolitik, which have led kleptocracies to perfect the art of subservience to the interests of major powers in exchange for their survival. Therein lies the kleptocracy’s main strength.

The past three decades saw an emboldened gang of kleptocrats flauntingly looting communal wealth, thus causing the poverty rate to more than double. That rate would have been even higher had it not been for the safety vent of emigration, itself a direct consequence of the rule of thievery.

It is no coincidence that the development potentials of the economy and society at large have been stifled beyond amends as kleptocracy took much deeper roots over the past three decades. The alienated generation was hence pushed to emigration, deprived as it was of all hope for financial security, social mobility, and real prosperity.

In that sense also, kleptocracy is a destroyer of nations.

A number of initiatives have been hailed as spearheads in what has been dubbed as the international war on corruption.

However commendable these initiatives may be, their impact remains doubtful. This is because all financial transactions are readily monitored and traceable, yet kleptocrats, money launderers, human traffickers, tax evaders and other actors in the criminal underworld continue to use the world’s major financial centers as conduits and shelters to the proceeds of their crimes.

The confiscation of stolen assets and the prosecution of kleptocrats across jurisdictions remain the two litmus tests of international resolve to eradicate crimes against citizenries.

Though in a way and to an extent it could be victimized by the kleptocracy, private business enterprise is not wholly innocent of pay-for-play relations with kleptocrats. Witness the enrichment of merchants of death and the criminal and wanton destruction of environmental resources, all made possible by private businesses bribing their way to secure “favorable” legislation and/or to prevent the enactment of  “unfavorable” legislation.

Commendable legal research has been done that focused on flagrant gaps in legislation that have so far enabled the kleptocratic system of governance. More needs to be done to debunk the stark falsehood that the country’s legislation is adequate but needs to be enforced, whereas in fact it is mostly legislation concocted and enacted by the kleptocrats and for the kleptocrats. It is a strain of legislation intended to obfuscate rather than facilitate adjudication.

Research is also needed in the assessment of the extent to which international legislation could thwart crimes against citizenries across jurisdictions.

Research is needed in the following five areas that highlight the destruction of the market economy and with it the prospects of development and prosperity.

1. The kleptocrats’ ill-gotten wealth is more often than not generated through the creation of monopolies and oligopolies protected by pay-for-play legislation, or worse still, by the hollowing out of the State’s regulatory and oversight capacity.
2. With kleptocrats on the lookout for instances of business success to prey on, investment spending is severely truncated rendering economic development nigh impossible.
3. The unsustainability of the model of economic management designed to sustain the kleptocracy.
4. Debunking the myth of the much-vaunted resilience of the economy, with research focusing on that economy’s inability to redress the impact of exogenous shocks, mild or major.
5. Kleptocracy led to the emergence of an economy that is decoupled from resilience-creating production of goods in agriculture and manufacturing industries.

Research is needed on the extent to which the kleptocracy enables the political abuse of citizenry. The country’s human rights record is shameful to say the least, and the nationwide scale of injustice arising from the plundering of communal wealth is appalling.

Research needs to lay bare the scale of environmental degradation caused directly by a system of governance based on the looting communal resources. A tally of pay for play legislation needs to be drawn and the free rein it gave to merchants of death and to polluting industries to wreak havoc in the environment needs to be exposed.

Kleptocracy is anathema to the very foundations of democracy and to the political ideal of sovereignty.

Research needs to elucidate:

1. the role of the kleptocracy in exacerbating social injustice.
2. the extent to which sovereignty is desirable, defendable, or sustainable in countries where the “sovereigns” are the kleptocrats.

In-depth research is needed in at least four broad pivotal areas, namely:

1. Public finance and the hollowing out of the state administration
2. Monetary policy
3. Economic policy’s role in allowing kleptocracy to take root.
4. The acceleration of the slide toward the failed State.

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