Combating core vapgs core imperative of the operation for security and cooperation in europe or the ofce. Corruption takes many forms, but the one that concerns us today is clep tokcracy or rule by heed. Nowhere is this idea of corruption as a system of government more fully realized than in the russian federation. Russia has been on a steady path to clep krotic authoritarianism ever since putin entered the seen 18 years ago. Since then, a new generation has entered adulthood, one that does not remember a russia before putin. As these young russian men and women enter the workforce, they confront institutions in both the public and private sectors that have been completely assimilated into putins clep toe crat tick architecture and are left with the choice to ielker be coopted into this corrupt system, or effected from it. While put continue is the central figure responsible for russians dispense into clep toe crattic rule, hes not the only one. A strong man of the kremlin is surround by a loyal group of kroonny whos aid and awet the president complicit in the robbery of the russian people and the sad state of russian democracy. Moreover, hes cronies enable the kremlin to export its brand of clep tackcracy into neighboring countries transforming corruption into a potent geo strategic weapon. Our briefing today will examine the dynamic of putins closest circle in order to establish who most strengthens and benefits from his rule. Additionally, briefers will analyze how these cronies advance putins goals and interests. We are grateful to have such distinguished panelists with us here today. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this important issue. First where he have brian whit more who joins us all the way from prog. Brian is a Senior Analyst and also writes the power vertical blog. Prior to joining rfeo in 2007, he worked for eight years for the boston globe. First in the globes Moscow Bureau and later as a central and Eastern Europe correspondent based based in prag. Following brian we have i willya and and i understand your wife just had a baby, so thank you so very much for being with us here today rather than at home. You know, we understand what a sacrifice youre making to talk about this very important topic. Who joins us from the russian fed not the russian federation, the Free Russia Foundation where he is a Research Expert where he is an academy associate. In addition, he heads free speech llc which runs a project on the export of corrosive practices from post soviet states to the west. Well then here from dr. Sal vin who the hell sink i can commission knows very, very well who sat senior professor and a professor at georgetown university. Onders is a leading specialist on policy in russia, ukraine, and Eastern Europe and worked as an economic adviser to the president of ukraine from 1994 to nine mean it 97. Following him we have marrous lor rine help me out here. These lith wanian names, man. Okay, that. Who joins us from further away that prag. Is he a Senior Analyst for policy analysis and a former fellow at the hudson insurance stutd. A highly regard journalist, he is been reporting on russian and dams domestic Foreign Policy for over two decades. And finally we will hear from ambassador daniel frooed, distinguished fellow at the atlantic council. He is one of the foremost experts on russia government. His career with the Foreign Service has spanned over four decades and seven presidencies. Wow. Ending earlier this year when he retired from his post as a state Department Coordinator on sanctions policy. Very relevant for this discussion. We will conclude way q a session. Id like now to give the floor to our first panelist, brian whit more who will provide us with an overview. Brian, the floor is yours. There we go. Thats better. So i started again or can everybody hear me . I cant say how delight i did am this issue is getting attention. Weve been talking for the past few years about the information war, ive attended strat com dialogues and seminars and im enjoying all of them, but i think ive been harping on the issue that we need to broaden the aperture here a little bit, because information of information is just one of the things that the kremlin has weaponized. And, in my opinion, the most important thing to weaponize is corruption. Ill start by saying i think its a bit misleading to characterize Vladimir Putins rush russia as simply contract tocracy because this implies that the regimes primary aim is the enrichment of the elite. Corruption has been instrumental liesed at home and weaponized abroad. The domestic role of corruption is control, the elite to maintain its loyalty, members of the russian political elite effectively have the license to seek rents, to month ties their positions so long as they remain politically loyal and politically useful to the putin regime. Only those who prove disloyal or unuseful are ever prosecuted for corruption. When theres a Corruption Case in russia the first question i always ask myself is not what did ore she do what he or she is accused of doing what they did, because of course they did. Who did they cross political sfli what happened . Why are they on the outs politically. Thats always the first question to request squ when a Corruption Case bubbles up in this regime. Internationally corruption has been weaponized an used as a tool of state crafted. Kremlin seeks to capture elites and establish networks of influence abroad by ensnarg officials in corrupt deals. Im fot going to get into details because we want to keep it brief in the beginning reasoned we can go into broad details later. Moreover, the russian state has both clem clep toe crattic and ideological elements to it. This what i call the two russias. Sometimes clep toe crattic raurk and ideological russia do indeed work hand in glove. By id lom cal russia i mean project of Vladimir Putin to make russia great again, brick it back up off its knees and restore it to what it believes to be its rightful place as a world power. Sometimes corruption and ideology go hand in hand, but at other times the two russians are at tension with each oj and operate at cross purposes. Closely related, the weapon nyzation of corruption is the weaponzation of russian organized crime which is also used as a tool of state craft. But just as it is incorrect to classify russia as simply a clep tokcracy its also incorrect to classify more accurately as my friend and cloeg wrote in a recent report, russia is effectively a state way national liesed fafya. The russian securitier is vitses work closely with organized crime often facilitating their activities. As a result of the Security Services are able to establish a socalled churn net kaza or black account which has unprais traceable cash that can be used for all sorts of off the books operations and influence operations abroad. I can go into details a little bit more detail about this but ill keep my opening remarks brief. Organized crime groups are often pressed into service to perform tasks the kremlin wants to keep its fingerprints off, such as smuggling weapons into. Done boss, akas sas nating dissidents be in london and so on and so forth. Weaponized corruption and organized crime are part of a larger, nonsa net tick arsenal that Putins Kremlin is using to weaken western institutions. Other elements of this include finance, information, energy, cyber space, the port for extremist Political Parties and religion. If you want to think about the courses of putins conduct in this, why is this regime behaving this way, and you look at pute tint man, i like to look at putin as kind of a hybrid product. Hybrid is another one of the words over the past few years im going to put. Into a whole new context. Putins a hybrid man. Its very stereo typical to look at him as a project of the kgb. I think this is correct but its only part of the picture. If gene logically if he ask a project of the kgb, sos logically hes a project of the wild 90s, of the darwinian criminal world that existed in cities like st. Petersburg where he was deputy mayor, he played a integral role as a liaison between the citys authorities and organized crime groups in the 1990s and i think this is something very important to understand. In conclusion, ill say that one of my favorite talking points is the headline of a piece i passed to other panelists here, and that is that corruption is the new com mu niflt. Kremlins black cash is the new red menace, and it has to be looked at that way. Corruption is a tool of state craft, its something that spreading from moscow and its spread together tool of influence. And if you think about this, communism despite its faults and their alegion, did attempt to appeal to human ideals and aspirations although in practice it often worked against these ideals. Corruption on the other hand appeals to the most universal and basic human instinct out of greed, and sadly its often insink with human nature which makes the new red menace potentially more dangerous and insidious than the old one. Finally ill say corruption today is not just a matter of Good Governance anymore. Its not something we want to fight just because we want to be honest and good, although we do. Corruption is a National Security issue of the highest order and needs to be treated as such. Thank you. Well thank you very much, brian, for that fascinating overview as well as the source of elaborations on how the regime exactly is structured, that its not simply ruled by thieves, it has these ideological components to it. I read your article corruptions new com mu figs nix today an its an incredible piece. I think framing the issue be in those terms is precisely the way foreign pogsy needs to be approaching this topic the illya. Thank you, and thank you for coming. As brian correctly said, finally this topic is out in the open, everyone is discussing it and actually we quickly transferred from not discussion to a term which i recently herd, outrage fatigue with clep tokcracy. Everyone understands the problem but no one knows how to handel this unbelievable flow of information and what to do with it. Ive been studying this topic since at least 2011, bit of a junior expert with other people and senior experts from russia and europe warning about National Security expimplicati coming from west with post soviet space and even before aggression against ukraine happened, i predicted in 2013 that especially russian clep tokcracy are taking their practices anchor troupgs europe and the u. S. Over at least 25 corrupt corrupt or corecognition channels, manipulation of information, influencing discourse at think tanks and universities and so forth. In this briefing 2019 put forward a third warning and prediction. I think the west especially the u. S. As leader of democratic world has been so negligent and appeasing of corruption and subversion of Democratic Values under putin over the last 18 years that even on the best Case Scenario russian clep tokcracy will not be eradicated in the future. The best that we can hope right now from now on is to try to attempt to contain negative global to contain negative Global Impact of the radical kleptocracy coming. And try preserving its own Democratic Institutions. In a nutshell, this is no longer just about russia, but really about the u. S. And the west. In my Research Paper that is slated to come out at the Kleptocracy Initiative of the Hudson Institute in the next month, called we call it the values, and the influence in the west sort of the working title. I really want to emphasize the influence of nonstate actors or supposed nonstate actors coming from the post soviet space. The biggest difference with the soviet union is that not only there is this seeming sort of business interactions between supposedly private sector and in the west but the nature of transactions has changed considerably. And theres a little understanding in my view in the west, despite ample evidence that really from soviet times we now see the fusion of three different worlds and values coming from post soviet space in one elite. So in soviet times we used to have three different worlds, communist party, kgb and different Security Services and Law Enforcement and actual organized crime. They were actually quite antagonistic and quite conflicting with each other especially at some important points but now i would argue that those in russia and in kazakhstan and azerbaijan, they took the worst, but most practical values and Business Practices from each of the free world and amalgamated them into one comprehensive ideology and tactic and my friends with the kleptocracy and the investigative journalist, they have showing especially in st. Petersburg in the 1990s, putin came to power with a team which has been experienced and used network from all those three worlds. I think one of the important conclusions of that study and other studies that we do in Free Russia Foundation there are no systemic or any kind of liberals in russian government. Its a big myth which is still somehow spread in europe especially in countries that like finland or germany that still cooperate with russia on many business levels so people have been implicated in those years under putin. Even in st. Petersburg. Altogether with putin. I would argue i mean, recently i highly recommend the study that just came at londons rusi. And it raises this question that the russian cooperating is one of the most widespread operations especially big businesses in russia. Starting from the case of Corporate Trading this became a Common Future and the kremlin doesnt want to implement any measures to protect the businesses. Previously last year in the report for Free Russia Foundation in brussels called design, i also argue that the term oligarch is no longer meaningful really. In fact, it is commonly widespread but a huge and dangerous mistake to understand that some private businessman and market economy exists in russia but they dont. And Security Services and business in russia really means state favors, tax breaks, contracts from kremlin and these oligarchs are now cash handlers of cash flow allowed by putin. Also kremlin has special compromising material or other leverage over the lives. Even if the previously considered oligarchs they live in the west and they have the looks and lifestyle like western businessman they are putins handlers. Because their base is in russia really. But they want to spend money and sort of enjoy the best of two worlds. This brings me to my second major point and presentation. Kleptocracy in russia is no longer a residual on the u. S. I believe there are strong indicators that we are progressing through the time that the very existence of liberal western capitalism with accountability and Good Governance and jeopardy due to the kleptocratic in the russians. In fact, g7 itself could be, you know, not seen as that much about westen liberalism. I mean if you look at the countries like italy or et cetera. So we see that most developing countries seem to be learning whats kleptocratic government and Business Practices and capitalism based on the rule of law and proper separation of powers is no longer an ideal from societies where people have adapted to sophisticated and often seemingly comfortable and acceptable forms of state level corruption. So corruption is a new accepted norm. On many, many levels in societies both in the west and in post soviet space and elsewhere. So together with Free Russia Foundation and the group of 2,000 activists around the world, we are preparing a launch of a project which you mentioned in my introduction. And i think this is a new term that we believe is more relevant than oligarchs and other nonstate actors. It basically shows that we have a whole group of people and actors nonstate actors but connected with kleptocratic regimes who actively undermine the west and spending the profits in the west. I believe these individuals and corporations learned even more sophisticated financial disinformation and hightech methods to advance their own interests and there are multiple examples which i want to go to go into the session. What can we do and i have like one minute to discuss this. With this outrage fatigue. I think we need a new system of containment against russian and other post soviet kleptocracy that will create more up to date laws that deal with todays International Corruption and subversion, especially in regard to the Anonymous Companies in off shore jurisdictions. Something which kleptocracy is doing very well and the anticorruption groups are now discussing in washington especially. I also think we need to build Awareness Among western general public that will link that will create this understanding, acknowledgment in the minds of people about the link between transnational kleptocracy and the erosion of democracy in the west. So far, i have seen very few actual examples of that. So people in london now finally realize that they cant live in their own city, especially students, because of all the kleptocratics from around the world are raising real estate prices but need more examples like this. I will finish my presentation with warning that the price we pay today in the west to stop kleptocracy is considerable. And we have to understand that there will be a price. We need to especially in the business sector, we need to do containment. We need to really prevent some of the cash flows especially. But also many, ma