The Hidden Threats to Our Freedom with Tom Burgis

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1:25Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

1:59Anyways, let's get to it.

2:09The truth is fragile and constantly under threat. Corruption is a global issue and dirty money is everywhere. My guest today, Tom Burgess, has written a book that covers those very topics. It reads like a thriller, but it's alarmingly real life. Let's go to the conversation.

2:34So joining us now on Open Book is Tom Burgess. He's an international bestselling author, and he's an award-winning investigative journalist. And what a timely book. The title of this book is Cuckoo Land, Where the Rich Own the Truth. Tom, I mean, this is like probably perhaps the most timely book of the 2024 season, if you will. Myself, my producer, others in my office read the book with great fascination. So thank you for agreeing to come on the show. Pleasure. You know, listen, you've had a phenomenal career. You're a gutsy guy. Tell us a little bit about your start and tell us a little bit about what motivated you to write the book.

3:11Well, it's very nice to be here talking with you. I started as a foreign correspondent. I worked in Latin America and then I spent several years in Africa, but I was based in Johannesburg and then in Lagos covering West Africa. And more and more, I found myself writing about corruption and the power of the richest people in the world, which often go hand in hand. So I was looking at the big oil and mining companies. I was looking at the Chinese advance into Africa. I was looking at Russian oligarchs, mining businesses in Africa and so on. And I was seeing how corruption was the engine of these oil and mining industries that provide the feedstock of the global economy, if you like, from those places we think of as very poor, but some of the richest in the world in terms of those raw ingredients, those raw materials.

3:56And what I started to discover then as a correspondent, and then after that, when I came back to London about a little over 10 years ago and started working as an investigative reporter, was that there's this whole bit of the news business that's completely invisible to anyone other than the journalists and the targets of the journalism. And it's especially acute in London, but it affects journalism all over the world. And that is the ability of the rich to censor the press. So no, I don't mean government censorship. I mean, private sector, privatized censorship, if you like, right, where you can be spending, really, really good reporters can be spending a year more unearthing a story that really matters.

4:37Some of the ones I did with some really good reporters were about corruption in the world's poorest places, corruption that was helping to sustain monstrous dictatorships in pursuit of lucrative mineral deals. and time and time again, before publication, we would come up against incredibly well-equipped, well-funded law firms, PR agencies, sometimes surveillance, and we would never write about any of this. In some cases, this would mean that stories weren't published at all. Stories of massive public importance were just left off the public record. In some cases, it meant that we would have to censor ourselves.

5:15It puts incredible pressure on journalists and newsrooms. And essentially where I ended up with this idea was with this idea, this fear, if you like, that actually, if you are rich enough today, can you just decide what you want reality to be and impose that reality on the world? And then I happened to stumble across the one extraordinary story that became the central tale of Cuckoo Land. Yeah, I want to get into that story, but I've been dying to ask you this question since I finished your book. What the hell is wrong with these rich people? I mean, you know, I guess I grew up in the, you know, look, I've made some measure of wealth, but I grew up in the middle class, the blue collar middle class.

5:53I thought we had a great life. I don't understand why you have to be this rapacious where you have to rip through everything. You're going to be dead anyway. What the hell is wrong with these people? Go ahead. What's your insight there? You know, I think about that question a lot. And actually, there's a bigger question, which is, what's wrong with anyone in certain positions of power? I mean, before I was thinking about rich people, I was thinking about the people who order and carry out massacres in Nigeria, where I used to live. Or I was thinking about the oil ministers in Angola who had cut themselves on oil deals, siphoning off money that could have alleviated the poverty in the slums.

6:29And now this question, it is the central one. And it's one I try to grapple with at the very end of the book, at the very end of Cookerland, of like, what is going on here? What is this motivation that makes people spend huge amounts of money to have a version of themselves broadcast into the world that they want? And now, I'd be fascinated to say what you think. You know lots of rich people. But I actually think they're no different from the rest of us. I think that anyone wants to broadcast an idealized version of themselves. God knows millions of people spend enough time on Facebook doing exactly that.

7:01And any of us would want our secrets kept secret. And any of us would want the things we've done wrong in the past, buried away forever, and no one be able to discuss them. The problem is that the system exists built around the legal system, really, that allows people who accrue that much wealth, an oligarch, the boss of a multinational corporation, whoever it may be, to indulge those desires. That's the problem. I think that many, many of us, even, yeah, okay, I'm sure there are a virtuous few. I think if you gave Mandela a billion dollars, maybe he wouldn't have done that. But I'm not sure I can declare myself angelic enough not to feel the urge, if I had that much wealth, to do this, to crush scrutiny of myself.

7:42The problem is that we've allowed that system to develop that can be used in that way. Yeah, well, listen, I'll express my humanity to you. I went to work in the White House for all ego-related reasons. You know, I wanted to work for the president of the United States. And even though he was Cuckoo Land, definition of him, it happens to be the title of your book, I did it anyway to suit my ego. So I am like everyone else. I'm very human and I have these sensitivities and these traits. Let's go to a gentleman by the name. Could I just actually, could I pick up something? There was a real moment.

8:18I actually put it in my previous book, this moment, Kleptopia. It's about how dirty money is conquering the world. There was an extraordinary moment while you were in the White House that I think really illuminates this. And I don't want to get into the huge, vast saga of Trump-Russia, but I did write in a previous book about how so much of Trump's wealth came from the former Soviet Union, from really corrupt countries, and that he sort of revived a business career by using his brand as a reality TV star to renting out that brand to people who wanted to be able to pump money into US real estate, no question.

8:52ask. Essentially, he was facilitating an alternative reality for people with often very dubious fortunes from the former Soviet Union. And then it's that, I think, that gives us such an insight into how he governed. And there was that, first of all, in the friends he made, you know, his friendliness with other ultra rich people, I put Putin high in this list, who wanted to be able to dominate the truth. But then there's that incredible moment, isn't there, when you talk about the guy who sinks the three foot putt. And the next day, the White House transcript says, this is a guy who sinks 30-foot putts.

9:24And I thought that was such an electrifying cuckoo land moment. At the time, I hadn't conceived of the book. But actually, looking back, that's an extraordinary moment when you saw the basic rule break down, that we all have to have a certain respect that some things happened and some things didn't. And that was an extraordinary moment. And I think it's that kind of sense of entitlement to literally rewrite reality that I'm trying to describe. So it's interesting you bring that up because he does sink those putts. And I also said, just to add insult to injury, I said he threw a 40-yard spiral through a tire.

10:02And of course, people said I made that up. And so thankfully, there was a YouTube video of him doing it at the Buffalo Bills Stadium because I was present at the time that it happened. And thankfully, I was able to find the video. So people thought I was like blowing smoke up his you know what. Okay. Now I also saw him hit a foul shot in Madison Square Garden. So the problem is we dislike him because he's a sociopathic liar, but there are elements of his personality and his personage where he does do those things. He is somebody that doesn't choke under pressure. And so I told the truth about those things.

10:39A lot of journalists ridiculed me, but thank God there were tapes of actually what I was explaining. So, but I get the point. But what was extraordinary, wasn't it? It was that that even, nonetheless, even though you were describing, you know, remarkable, pretty cool things he was able to do, someone decided that he couldn't live with just having putted a three foot putt. It had to be 30. And so the transcript was changed. The sacrosanct White House transcript was changed. I didn't realize that the transcript was changed, but you know what? I'm sort of flattered by this, Tom. I'm hoping you don't mind me saying this way, you know, that happened seven years ago.

11:14Do you know how many people remember that press conference? And so I, you know, because I, all I did was go to the press podium and be myself and answer the questions to the best of my capability. I certainly wasn't going to lie for him. You could read, you know, you could go over the, that happened 10 years ago on the 21st, I'm sorry, seven years ago on the 21st of July, 2017. And I've watched it. All I did was try my best of my capability to tell the truth of what I saw. Yeah, but take that transcript. I thought the transcript chain was an extraordinary moment. I'm sorry, I took you off on a tangent.

11:44I took you off on a memory there, Ben. I wanted something really good for the country. And I was speaking aspirationally for the country and aspirationally about him 10 short days after that. And I served 11 days. It was 10 days after I got fired. But he doesn't have it in him. He just does not have it in him. He doesn't have the public service or the public mindedness in him to try to do well for other people. I think ultimately my life and my reflections on life, you want people in public service that actually like people. You want people in public service that want to serve people. My grandmother had a great expression.

12:25I'll share it with you, Tom. The best among us choose not to judge human frailty so harshly. And so we recognize in our humanity, we have frailty. And so therefore, let's not be overly judgmental of each other, but in fact, try to help each other through whatever the problems we have. He is the antithesis of that, unfortunately. And I think though, I think that's a beautiful expression, but I think, and this is again, something I try to grapple with so much in Cuckoo Land is that we do have to be able to judge each other's character. That's kind of the basis of a free society, right? To be able to make honest, yes, humane, but honest appraisals of each other's character and each other's fitness for office and responsibility.

13:04And that's what this system of essentially bullying or intimidation by force of wealth via lawyers and spies and so on. That's what that shuts down. And that is essentially the difference between a free society and an unfree one, whether or not we can scrutinize those who wield power effectively through the media or through any other means. So I want to get into that, if you don't mind, because there's a fascinating character in your book. Hopefully I'm pronouncing his name right, Muhammad O'Mersee. So I want people to read your book and i don't want to give a spoiler alert about the book but what a story this is so give us a the high notes of who he is what he did what the perpetration was your response to it and what does it tell you about the very wealthy well marmita mercy um an intriguing man i first heard about him actually when i was in the middle of being sued by uh by some oligarchs myself who didn't like my previous book and wanted it i've never quite figured out what actually happened how they want books destroyed, burned or pulped or whatever it might be, but anyway, taken off the shelves.

14:06And then I heard about this other case that was going on in the UK, the capital of privatised censorship. And it was that of a major donor to the Conservative Party, isn't at the moment, but tends to be in power here. And this major donor had employed the most ferocious of the London reputation management law firms, Carter Rock. And the firm on his behalf for sending threatening letters to a former MP, Charlotte Leslie, saying that she had done something unforgivable and appalling. What she had done is she'd written a memo that, among other things, had raised a few questions about where does this rich donor, Mohamed Amirsi's money, come from.

14:44He was having none of this. He thought she was getting in the way of his big ambitions. And I thought, first of all, this is an extraordinary example, isn't it, of wealth being deployed in the service of the narratives that the rich wish to prevail. But also, I thought, if you're prepared to go to such lengths to shut down even a little bit of scrutiny, I wonder what that past is. And that's where I set off. And that road then took me, well, the war in Ukraine started, so I couldn't go back to Russia by then, but it took me through contacts back into the past of Putin's St. Petersburg, and then on to elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, other places where Emersi had made huge amounts of money.

15:20So it made money in Russia, and then it was Kazakhstan, there was Uzbekistan. I went to Nepal, to Kathmandu, to track down on the trail of a Nepali oligarch that I mostly had done business with, all in the booming telecoms industry. And then there comes this moment where he's made his money, and about 10 years ago, he transforms into something else. He transforms into a pillar of the British establishment. And he does this with the help of the nephew of the now queen. And there's this extraordinary sort of metamorphosis into a philanthropist, a donor to Oxford University, a donor to the Conservative Party, a man for whom no door in the land from the Prime Minister down is ever closed.

16:01And what I try to do is simply to tell his story and the truth of his story, how he made his money, how he wrote his own story, and how in the British political and social system, no one wants to ask questions about where the money came from. You know, it's fascinating because we interviewed the author of The Butler to the World and the whole story of London being a great center. Right, Oliver Bullough, great guy. Yeah, Oliver's a great guy. And so we interviewed him to talk about this money laundering. And we also know from the global financial crisis that the drug lords around the world propped up the banking system with their illegal money sluicing through the marketplace and supposedly being laundered by the banks and offering some level of reserve protection.

16:50So is it just that we're flawed? Is it just that we're going to always have some seamy people in our societies that are doing these things and our governments are for whatever reason going to turn a blind eye? I think it's a constant struggle, isn't it? I think that the way political funding has gone, certainly in the US, and it's heading that way, I think more and more in Europe, means that the incentives are all wrong. So those who rule in our name are supposed to do that, right? Rule in our name. And we can still scrutinize politicians pretty effectively in the press, whether the sort of traditional mainstream press or in newer forms.

17:30Try to scrutinise the people who fund politics. Try to scrutinise the people who pay for access, who get to shape the policies of government. And you're likely to get a terrifying legal letter. I think you're right that to an extent, there's always going to be people who are, for whatever reasons, a combination of self-importance and vanity, and sometimes more sinister reasons, are trying to worm their way into politics. I would just say, though that this is becoming like a big national security problem as well in that the channels i mean in the us it's very familiar through citizens united and so on like the channels to influence the powerful are so unpoliced that it's you know it's been recognized in the uk that this is wide open to malign influence by whether it's putin's regime or whichever other hostile state and yet it's in the interests of the ruling class if you like it's in the interest of of those who who profit politically from hoovering up this money, no questions asked, to continue not to ask any questions.

18:27And it's completely antithetical to the democratic spirit, right? I think that's what's ultimately so terrifying about it, is that it's insulating the most powerful people from the scrutiny that we need, we really need to impose on them if we're going to have healthy societies. And that's what I found with the emergency story when I end up in a room in a law firm being screamed at by him. And I get this sense, you know, man to man of the rage, the rage, the wrath of someone who is so rich that they think that only their version of reality should be told. We have a person in our midst, he's worth about$200 billion.

19:07He's been$44 billion on Twitter. He renamed it X. He's got several hundred million followers. Obviously he's opened up the spigot of the algorithm so that he can reach, you know, I don't know. I mean, you tell me that's half the population of Europe if you've got 250 million followers, right? So, you know, two thirds of the United States. And he's politically active and he's pretty supportive of Donald Trump at this point, even though Donald Trump derogated him during the administration and said all kinds of mean and nasty things about him. He's in the Trump camp. What do you make of the psychology of all this.

19:45I mean, you're right about it. So just share with me what you think of the psychology of these people in terms of how they're thinking about things, why they're doing what they're doing. You know, as an example, he says he's for free speech. He hired Don Lemon, a hard left guy who's openly gay African-American. He had a bad interview with him. He fired him summarily. So what do you think of all this? I think we touched on this earlier when we said that I think any of us, there's this great expression. I think I know it from William Burroughs, actually. It says, wouldn't you? I think he's talking about heroin addiction.

20:20But anyone given enough power is going to indulge their worst impulses. And this is the problem. Gradually, over several decades, the winnowing away of the constraints on the powerful, right? Especially those whose power comes from wealth. What's the psychology at play? Well, I was able to see a mercy very close up for a long time. sometimes in person sometimes by speaking to people who knew him and i i think part of it is a desire for an age-old desire for status right for praise for recognition for being seen as the goods guy right nobody wants to be the nobody uh i went back to a passage in orwell recently when he he talks he writes fascinatingly about you know the the what he calls the lords of property and their hired liars and how, you know, on any side of any war, on any side of partisan politics, you're going to find people who are simply trying to amass personal influence.

21:17And maybe partly, Orwell said, it's to not be forgotten. You know, you mentioned at the beginning about, you know, you can't take any of this with you. But I think, in a sense, it's a hedge against death, isn't it? There's a desperate desire not to be one of the almost everybody whose name will be completely lost to history. Yeah, well, this is the whole thing with the art world, You know, the art is immortal, or at least the perception wise. Da Vinci's paintings, we can see them from 500 years ago. And they're still with us his expression of his genius. And so people want to capture that and put it on their walls.

21:51They think it's going to create more permanence. But these are works of art, aren't we? We're talking about work. We're talking about constructed. We're not talking about real people, right? We're talking about the image that they and their, as Orwell would say, hired liars create. And that almost is a work of art. They want to be hanging on lots of people's walls after they're gone. I think maybe fundamentally there's something like that going on. Yeah. Your other brilliant book is called Kleptopia and The Looting Machine. Tell us a little bit about that book as well because I have to confess I haven't read that, but I just purchased it and I look forward to reading it.

22:28So I started with The Looting Machine. I came back from Africa obsessed with, I mentioned it earlier, obsessed with one massacre that had taken place in Nigeria. that I'd covered and, you know, was a nightmare. And I tried to understand how the huge forces of corruption and behind that of the global oil industry that dominates Nigeria, how you get from those huge forces down to that one burned village. And after that, I started looking more at kind of, that was the looting machine really, was an account of oil and mining and how it begets corruption and conflict in Africa today, the modern plunder of Africa.

23:09And then I started to look at that more globally, this idea that corrupt money, dirty money, money that is made by holding power one way or another, that's a public trust and corruptly monetizing that for personal gain. So the king of that is Putin, but there's plenty of characters doing that in New York and London too. And that was kleptopia, how dirty money is conquering the world. And that's several stories all woven together, including some of the rise of Donald Trump and the money he absorbed from the former Soviet Union. And the idea there is to show that the biggest and most terrifying force against freedom today is these international networks of kleptocrats, right?

23:51Those who rule from corruption and that. And particular networks can combine a Zimbabwean dictator, a Kazakh oligarch, and a Wall Street hedge fund. And they're all privatizing power, if you like. And that's kleptopia. And that began with a chance meeting with an extraordinary mischievous man called Nigel, who had worked inside a Swiss bank and had secretly copied lots of the documents and hidden them in little red boxes in his flat. And that led me on this extraordinary journey through the world of dirty money. And in a way, that gets you to cuckoo land, I think, because it was through this process, I was just seeing again and again the extent to which, unbeknown to any readers, unbeknown to the readers of newspapers and books and the listeners of podcasts, there's this huge unseen force deciding what we can and can't know.

24:41It's fascinating. So we're at a point in our podcast, we'd like to make these about 30 or so minutes. We've called five words from your book. And so I'm going to read the words to you. It's a little name association. You tell me what you think of when I say this to you. Okay. So let's start with the word kleptocracy. When I say that word, you think of what? This is an interesting game. I think that a lot of people instantly go to the big yacht, right? The fancy yacht of the south of France. And actually, what I'm picturing is a woman I once spoke to in Kazakhstan. I snuck into a village in Kazakhstan where there had been a massacre and the survivors of the peaceful protest that had been shot up, they were tortured so that they would give the version of reality that the kleptocrat wanted, Nazarbayev, the ruling kleptocrat of Kazakhstan.