Wicked Coin Podcast

Power and corruption … two sides of a wicked coin. In this podcast, hosts Tatiana Sainati and Diana Shaw tell the stories of the world’s largest, most salacious corruption scandals and explore the myriad ways in which corruption creeps into the hearts and minds of men, the consequences of corruption for perpetrators and victims alike, and the red flags that, had they been identified and acted on, might have set the world on a different path.

"Dumplings,” Diamonds, & Plea Deals: Brazil’s Operation Car Wash

December 12, 2024



Join hosts Diana Shaw and Tatiana Sainati as they delve into the gripping tale of Operation Car Wash, one of the largest corruption scandals in history. Discover how a small money laundering investigation into a car wash unraveled a web of institutionalized crime, reaching the highest levels of Brazil's political and commercial spheres.

For more information on Operation Car Wash, check out:
- Operation Car Wash: Brazil’s Institutionalized Crime and the Inside Story of the Biggest Corruption Scandal in History, by Jorge Pontes and Marcio Anselmo
- Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history?, Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
- Brazil’s supreme court overturns ‘Car Wash’ corruption convictions, Michael Pooler, Financial Times

Ukraine’s Legacy of Corruption: From Kuchma to Yanukovych

November 14, 2024



In this episode of Wicked Coin, hosts Diana Shaw and Tatiana Sainati delve into the controversies surrounding Victor Yanukovych’s presidency in Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. During his tenure, Ukraine was heavily affected by corruption, with scandals and governance issues leaving a lasting impact on the country. Join Diana and Tatiana as they trace the history of corruption in Ukraine leading up to Yanukovych’s administration and explore how this era of corruption has impacted present-day Ukraine.

Transcript

Tatiana Sainati: Power and corruption. Two sides of a wicked coin. Welcome to the podcast that tells stories of the world's largest, most salacious corruption scandals, and explores the myriad ways corruption creeps into the hearts and minds of men and women, the consequences of corruption for perpetrators and victims, and the red flags that, had they been identified and addressed might have changed the course of history.

I'm Tatiana Sainati, and I'm joined by my co-host;

Diana Shaw: Diana Shaw.

Tatiana Sainati: We are lawyers at the D.C.-based law firm, Wiley Rein. I'm the Co-head of our International Arbitration and Disputes group, and Diana is a partner in our White Collar Crimes Practice. Our intrepid story developer, Vaib, couldn't be with us today.

Diana Shaw: We miss you, Vaib.

Tatiana Sainati: But she'll be with us for our next edition. Our listeners can probably tell I'm battling a cold, so a slightly different tone of voice than usual.

Diana Shaw: Still adorable.

Tatiana Sainati: Thank you. So, Diana, I am particularly excited to be discussing this month's corruption scandal with you because it involves a country where you have some pretty substantial and on point experience, the Ukraine.

So, for all of our listeners who may not know, Diana Shaw was the Acting Inspector General of the State Department and Diana, I believe part of that work entailed overseeing the transfer of funds from the United States to the Ukraine and making sure the funds got where they were supposed to go as part of the war effort.

Diana Shaw: That's right. So with the onset of Russian aggression in Ukraine in the 2022 timeframe, as many of you will know, the U.S. appropriated over $100 billion in funds to Ukraine, and it was a joint effort between the State Department, Department of Defense, and U.S. Aid, in large part to ensure that that money went where it was supposed to go and had the intended effect.

Tatiana Sainati: When we were first putting together our idea for this particular episode, we were going to focus on a particular corruption scandal involving Ukraine's president from roughly 2010 to 2014, President Yanukovych. During his tenure, Ukraine was plagued by endemic corruption, and we'll get into some of the details of the various scandals and issues in his presidency.

But in learning about that particular scandal, I became really intrigued by the history of corruption in modern Ukraine, which I'll define as post-Soviet Ukraine and independent Ukraine. And what we'll be doing in this episode is sort of tracing that history and exploring a little bit, in addition to our traditional red flags, how corruption became institutionalized in the country, and what can be done in circumstances where that happens to a state. How do you get out of institutionalized corruption if it's been woven into the very fabric of your state?

Diana Shaw: Wow, if we're going to accomplish that in this podcast, I'm going to be very impressed with us.

Tatiana Sainati: Maybe a little ambitious. We'll at least touch on that theme.

Diana Shaw: Love it, love it.

Tatiana Sainati: So, the history of corruption in modern day post-Soviet Ukraine really actually goes all the way back to Soviet era Ukraine. And what happened is a number of individuals who had ties to Soviet organized crime became part of the ruling elite in the Ukraine in the 1980s. So, in the era immediately before Ukraine achieved independence. And the corruption that they brought with them, I suppose, or that they institutionalized into the Ukraine in the 1980s, persisted even after independence.

Our story begins with the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, and I'm going to say right now at the outset, I will probably mispronounce some of these names, and I'm very sorry for that. Despite having the name Tatiana, I am not Slavic, and so I may mispronounce some things.

Leonid Kuchma was Ukraine's second president, and he served from 1994 to 2005. And he ran for president in 1994 on a platform of pro-market reforms. So, Ukraine had just achieved independence a few years prior and was still really a communist type economy. And Kuchma said, we can do better. We can liberalize our economy.

On the corruption front, and this is why I think our story starts with his presidency, Kuchma consciously implemented an oligarch system. He wanted what he called “financial industrial groups” to drive market reform. So, in his vision, he would privatize state run monopolies and give those monopolies basically to individuals, who wound up being handpicked either by him or other members of the then existing ruling elite.

So, here's how it worked. What he did is give out a mass voucher program. Every adult Ukrainian received a voucher, which they could then use to acquire a stake in one of the state monopolies that was being privatized. Technically, selling those vouchers to an intermediary was illegal, but as you can probably imagine where this is going, what happened is, people who didn't really understand a free market economy at all were desperate for money now and not willing or able to wait for dividend payoffs down the line, sold their vouchers for pennies on the dollar to a handful of private intermediaries.

Many of those private intermediaries who ended up acquiring majority shares in these privatized monopolies, then entered parliament. And as parliamentarians, they passed laws that benefited their own business interests. Here's one example: On April 9th, 2004, towards the end of his tenure in office, Kuchma signed a law privatizing something called Ukrrudprom, which was a conglomerate of several enterprises involved in raw material extraction. And the terms of the deal limited distribution of those state assets that had been held by those entities to just three prominent oligarchs, including President Kuchma's own son-in-law. And that was a law that of course had been drafted and approved by a parliament full of oligarchs who all stood to benefit from this and similar deals.

So that's the state of the Ukraine in 2004. It has gone from Soviet state monopolies to effective oligopoly. Is that the right word?

Diana Shaw: If not, I love it.

Tatiana Sainati: An oligarch system. In 2004, in the presidential election, another individual, who became President Yushchenko, rose to prominence. He was appointed prime minister in 1998. He was extremely popular because of the economic initiatives that he had overseen and what they had done for the country. And he was one of the very few figures in Ukraine who was untouched by corruption. He was called the beekeeper because he loved beekeeping. He also loved painting landscapes.

So really down to earth individual. And he was beloved in the country. But he was too popular for his own good, so the president, Kuchma, dismissed him. He became an opposition leader at that point, took a very firm anti-corruption stance, and ran for president in 2004. Again, his popularity proved problematic. He was poisoned by dioxin. It left him severely disfigured - almost killed him - and it's widely assumed, although never definitively proved, that it was his opponent, who we'll be talking about later, a man named Yanukovych, who masterminded the poisoning.

Yushchenko initially loses the race, the presidential race, in 2004, but the election results are dubious, and the Supreme Court of Ukraine wound up nullifying them. Yushchenko then wins in a rerun. He takes over the presidency in January 2005, and he is promising radical political change. He's inspired millions with a vision of a transformed and democratic Ukraine. And he was viewed as a messiah. I mean, the word messiah was used not infrequently by his acolytes, who were devoted to him.

Unfortunately, all did not go as planned. The first two years of his term, this is 2005 to 2007, are marked by what most observers called a kind of presidential paralysis. It appeared, in the words of one of his former chiefs of staff, as though he thought by attaining the presidency, he had done his part, and he really didn't seem to know where to go from there.

He was also, unfortunately, according to many in his inner circle, a terrible judge of character. This combination of a lack of drive, a lack of vision, and willingness to take charge, and an enthusiasm for people who he maybe shouldn't have liked as much as he did, really created the ideal situation for the old oligarchs and even new oligarchs to continue controlling both the government and the public coffers.

Yushchenko was known for turning a blind eye to corruption for those in his inner circle, and corruption and bribery became systemic under his watch, so none of the reforms that he had promised.

Diana Shaw: What do we make of that? Right? Like, here he is campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, and then as soon as he's in the seat, he suddenly has a blind spot for everybody in his inner circle who is taking advantage of their positions to push corruption. Do you buy this like he was just a bad judge of character?

Tatiana Sainati: I find that really hard to believe.

Diana Shaw: Right? Is that just a helpful narrative?

Tatiana Sainati: Because it would have to be not just that he was a really bad judge of character, but that the people in his inner circle who were advising him when he went in were also really bad judges of character. And it feels like a stretch to think that what was really going on here is just, “Oh, he just can't tell that these oligarchs are bad dudes and that they're doing bad things.”

Diana Shaw: I also feel like the types of people who would be attracted to supporting him on his rise to power are not going to be the corrupt actors who are playing a long game, assuming that he's going to end up in power and then empower them to be corrupt. So, some of these people must have come out of the woodworks and I would assume there would have to be a clash between those who had come along with him on the ride who, I would hope, actually have true commitment to anti-corruption principles, and then these guys who are pushing their way in.

Tatiana Sainati: Well, and it's interesting you say that. And I read nothing about any such clash, but a number of his chiefs of staff resigned. Which is usually indicative that there is, at least behind the scenes, some sort of clash taking place. It's interesting when Yushchenko left office, they discovered that this foundation, which his wife created in 2006 to build a children's hospital in Kyiv, had raised $18 million during his tenure as president. That hospital was never built. No one knows what happened to that $18 million. And it was largely given by a lot of these oligarchs who were in his inner circle. So was he really as innocent, was he really as committed to an anti-corruption program as he purported to be? Or was he just savvy enough, astute enough to realize that there was an appetite, for an anti-corruption narrative when he was running for president and that it was a good way to get into office?

Diana Shaw: Or like in so many of the stories we tell did the power ultimately corrupt him? Maybe he started out truly believing in these principles And then once you get into the system and you see how the machine works it's almost impossible, given what human nature is, not to be impacted by the power.

Tatiana Sainati: And that actually fits quite well with this this narrative of him being a paralyzed president, someone who just couldn't take action, despite all of the lofty promises he had made. Maybe he just couldn't summon the wherewithal to put in the hard fight that needed to be fought to root out the corruption.

Diana Shaw: I mean, it is hard. And as you and I know, when we think about the fight against corruption and the ecosystem and all of the different entry points for corruption, it's very intimidating to try to take on because it is like, it's a game of whack a mole. The other thing that this makes me think of, and I think we see this in politics everywhere, is sometimes you have very visionary political figures, and they are so inspiring because they are visionaries, but the messy, sort of unglamorous work of governing doesn't always translate.

From a visionary who can inspire you with their message and the picture that they can paint with their words of a beautiful future and like just what it takes to marshal the resources of a bureaucracy and actually translate that into getting things done and so maybe that's part of what we're dealing with here.

Tatiana Sainati: I could totally see that.

Well, unsurprisingly, Yushchenko lost his next bid for president in 2010.

Diana Shaw: Shocker.

Tatiana Sainati: To Viktor Yanukovych, who was his opponent in 2004. The man potentially responsible for poisoning him, causing his disfigurement.

Diana Shaw: So, they just swung straight the other way. Why not?

Tatiana Sainati: Yes, exactly. By 1997, he was the equivalent of governor of the Donetsk region. In 2002, he's appointed prime minister by President Kuchma. 2004, he runs for president against Yushchenko, wins the corrupt election, loses the more accurate rerun.

Yanukovych's presidency was not smooth. It was plagued by reports of massive corruption and cronyism. More than half of the ministers he appointed were from the Donbass region, which is the region where he was governor. He allotted more than 46 percent of the state budget to just that one region, so the rest of the country was left with about half of the state budget.

Diana Shaw: Oh wow, that's a bold move.

Tatiana Sainati: Yes. He consolidated economic power in the hands of a few, very deliberately, that included his son, and this group was known as “The Family.” Very mafioso.

Yanukovych himself amassed a vast personal fortune. It's estimated he's worth at least a couple of billion dollars, which, you know, that's not bad for a mid-level business executive turned civil servant. His downfall, however, was not related to his corrupt activities, at least not explicitly.

In November 2013, he was due to travel to Lithuania for an EU Summit, and he was expected to sign a framework agreement that would put the Ukraine on the path to eventual entry into the EU and would also facilitate free trade of goods between the EU and the Ukraine. It was an extremely popular agreement.

But Vladimir Putin and Russia did not like it. They did not like the Ukraine swinging towards the EU. And Putin allegedly threatened to drive the Ukraine into a default on its sovereign debt if the deal was signed.

So, Yanukovych does not sign the deal. And this sparks a wave of protests. They were initially centered on the Maidan Square. They become known as the Maidan protests. Yanukovych turns the most elite branches of his security forces on them, chased them all the way up a hill, beating them the whole way. Unsurprisingly, that does not cause the protesters to turn away. Instead, it redoubles the protest efforts.

Violence escalated when Yanukovych issued sweeping reforms to restrict freedom of speech and assembly. Ultimately, about a hundred people died in the Maidan protests. Hundreds more were injured.

In February 2014, Yakovich flees to Russia. He knows his time is coming. Then what he does is asks Putin for help. He asks Putin specifically to use the Russian military to restore order in the Ukraine.

Diana Shaw: Wow. Okay.

Tatiana Sainati: So, what does that do? It gives Putin cover to increase military presence in the Crimea, which is not where the protests or violence was centered, but you know. Ultimately that leads to Putin annexing the Crimea.

Diana Shaw: Which, as we know, ends up being sort of a precursor to more recent events.

Tatiana Sainati: Yes, Yanukovych has since been tried in absentia for high crimes, treason, accused of violating the Constitution to the detriment of sovereignty and economic security of Ukraine, as well as providing assistance to a foreign state. Pretty damning.

After he left the country, protesters stormed his mansion. You know what they found?

Diana Shaw: Tell me.

Tatiana Sainati: A zoo. A pure copper roof. A shooting range, a tennis court. a bowling alley, an 18-hole golf course, a floating restaurant shaped like a pirate ship, and, this is my favorite, a pure gold loaf of bread.

Diana Shaw: Tatiana, why might one have or need a pure gold loaf of bread?

Tatiana Sainati: I struggle to understand it. It doesn't really seem like art. It does seem reminiscent of Marie Antoinette's “let them eat cake”, but with even more, you know.

Diana Shaw: Wow.

Tatiana Sainati: Yes, Yanukovych had in his zoo, tigers, giraffes - this is not your typical backyard zoo. Think Emperor Nero, right?

Diana Shaw: Okay, not goats and cows and horses.

Tatiana Sainati: Not goats. This isn't a petting zoo. This is a full-on zoo. His shooting range was underground. I don't know why you need an underground shooting range, but that's where it was. But just really an extraordinary level of personal wealth. It's currently estimated that he and his associates, that group known as The Family, embezzled as much as $100 billion from the Ukraine. That's the figure that the chief prosecutor put on it.

And the EU and the U.S. both imposed sanctions on Yanukovych personally and a lot of members of The Family and their inner circle. He still seems to be living quite well in Russia. He's been tried in absentia for multiple crimes, sentenced to I think 13 years in jail, which seemed a little short to me.

Diana Shaw: That's all?

Tatiana Sainati: Mhm. But none of that has actually come to pass because he's been living his best life in Russia. So.

Diana Shaw: So, he's probably never going to feel the sting of all of his bad acts.

Tatiana Sainati: A lot of what happened with him has also been kept confidential and a lot of the focus has been on the annexation of Crimea and his assistance to Russia.

But I think that's interesting and kind of segues nicely to where we are today. We're not going to talk too much. about corruption in the Ukraine today. Current President Zelensky has really cracked down on it. He's been forced to, as I think you know better than most, but corruption today is really linked to the war effort and it's impeding Ukraine's ability to defend itself.

And I see that as tying back to the Maidan revolution and to the corrupt actor, that Ukraine had in Yanukovych, who is obviously someone who is willing to put himself before country, going so far as to enlist the aid of a foreign government to invade his own country in his own self-interest. And so, I think that really dramatically illustrates how corruption and state sovereignty, corruption and national security, are really tied together.

But I'd be curious your thoughts on what you saw in the Ukraine and on the nexus between corruption and national security.

Diana Shaw: It's so interesting. Well, I mean honestly, what was fascinating to me the first time I went to Ukraine, and I've been to Ukraine twice since the breakout of the war. You know, I expected when I went that the entire focus would be on winning the war and while, you know, obviously there was a big push to ensure that there wasn't corruption in the aid that was coming from the U.S., I fully expected that to be a secondary consideration because, of course, winning the kinetic war is going to be primary.

What I was surprised to find was a very strong message that the Ukrainians were fighting a two-front war. It was a war against Russia and a war against corruption because they saw them both as sort of inextricably intertwined as part of the fight for the future for Ukraine. And there was a recognition that if they couldn't get the fight against corruption right, there wasn't going to be a future worth winning.

The civil society organizations in Ukraine are very active on this front, very committed to ensuring that the corruption of the past doesn't become part of Ukraine's future, but it's a long road. And what they're trying to do in Ukraine is basically accomplish generational change in the matter of a few years.

It's sort of an experiment that I'm not aware has been undertaken in quite this way in many other places, so it will be very interesting to see what they're able to accomplish.

Tatiana Sainati: Well, we've really started down the path of talking about red flags, but I think we're at the point in our discussion where we're going to talk about the red flags that had they been identified and addressed, might have set the world on a different path. And boy, I mean, this is definitely a heavier episode than our previous have been, but when we talk about setting the world on a different path, it's cases like the Ukraine, where there's the annexation of Crimea and now the more recent Russian aggression that we're really seeing that the entire course of history maybe could have been changed had some of these issues been addressed earlier on.

I think what – and Diana, I know you can speak more eloquently and with more detail on this point – but I think as we get into these red flags, it is important to remember that the Ukraine has come a long way.

Diana Shaw: It really has. I mean, it has a long history with corruption, and I know Ukrainians really feel that. I think it's a hard thing for Ukrainians to have to own, but obviously there's a great amount of pride in the efforts that are underway. When I was there in January, there was a lot of excitement around the fact that Ukraine had increased in a positive way on Transparency International's Corruption Index. They had gone up three points in the right direction. And so, they had moved to I think it was 104 out of 180, which was really remarkable, a big step for them in a short amount of time.

And so it's momentum like that, that I think is really important in a moment like this, when they're trying to do transformational generational change in a very short period of time with quite a lot of other things going on at the same time and under resourced and everything else. So, it's very exciting to see, but to be able to sustain this and to ensure that it really takes root is, I think, key here.

And that's what I'll be looking for as we watch this experiment unfold. Will the inherent value of embracing an anti-corruption mindset, will that really settle into the culture and to the social mindset and become part of what Ukraine is in the future? And really, Ukraine's future is very much unsettled at the moment, so we have to see how that unfolds as well.

Tatiana Sainati: Yeah, again, pretty heavy, like, actual course-of-history stuff that we're dealing with. In terms of taking root, and I love that image of having an anti-corruption mindset really taking root in the society, in the apparatus of government.

You know, one of the red flags that we see here, I think, is conflicts of interest. not having a policy on conflicts of interest from the beginning of independence, from the moment when the country is starting to privatize and have fortunes and power from private enterprises amassed in the hands of the few. And then having those same individuals be passing laws and having really close ties with the uppermost echelons of government. So, I'm curious to get your take on conflicts of interest and what policies might have been more beneficial.

Diana Shaw: Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate that at that critical kind of juncture in their evolution, they sort of baked that into the DNA. I think we often see that when cronyism and nepotism is part of the system, and in this case, it was, you know, out in the open, it was fully acceptable. You're going to see problems like this. It becomes very easy, especially when it's institutionalized to consolidate power very quickly in the hands of a few, and particularly when they're in control of the purse strings and then also have the ability to legislate. They can very quickly embed and then completely entrench themselves in power.

And it's then becomes incredibly difficult to dislodge them. Again, it becomes so important that people in that situation think about the greater good as opposed to their own self-interest and put safeguards in place. But of course, that's asking a lot of human beings to do that. And, you know, I think it's important to think about what was happening in history at that time.

I mean, this was a sea change, right? And so this was about, you know, kickstarting an economy that was moving from communist to something different, not quite capitalist. And so, they were trying something new and we saw how that worked out. But I think definitely one of the red flags here was, not at the very outset thinking about structuring a system that recognized the dangers of allowing kind of rampant cronyism and nepotism to run wild.

And then, again, not having strong policies against conflicts of interest and marrying that up with checks and balances that provide the kind of transparency that you get through financial disclosures and other things like that, that really give you the ability to kick the tires to ensure that your public officials don't have the ability to self-deal when they're exercising their official authority.

The risk that you have when you don't have systems in place that force financial disclosures, it then becomes really left to everybody's – it’s the honor system, right? And then people will interpret for themselves when they think that they, have a financial interest in a case. And as we see, as things come out, like some of the recent information around, The Supreme Court, like people will interpret that differently.

Some people will take the position that their interests weren't implicated. And, you know, to those on the outside, they're like, absolutely, they are. And so that's the problem is that when there's not a light shown on it, reasonable minds can differ. And so that's why you do want to have a process where someone objective is looking at that and trying to apply those factors in an objective way, because the truth is like it does influence your judgment. We can't be objective about ourselves. It's the whole reason why we have these rules. It's just true. And frankly, I will tell you, as a former government official I don't want to have to try to be objective about myself.

It's really hard. I was grateful that the rules existed because it took it out of my hands. I don't want to be put in that position and so the rules really do exist to help people because it's just not really realistic to expect that people can do that exercise objectively about themselves.

Tatiana Sainati: I've always been fascinated by the legal rule or the legal standard, which governs, I think, both the judiciary, but also attorneys is the appearance of bias. You have to avoid the appearance of bias, which in some ways, it removes any subjectivity from the calculus, right? It's not whether I, Tatiana, personally feel like I'm biased or not by an apparent conflict of interest. It's whether someone else looking at this would say that seems odd or not, right?

Diana Shaw: I think that's right, and it makes me think of another point here. It ties back to trust in institutions. And I think where there's the appearance of bias, the appearance of self-dealing, it erodes trust in those institutions. And why I find that particularly concerning - I mean, I think it should be concerning in any democracy if your public doesn't trust your institutions.

But I worry about the slippery slope, particularly in a in a place like Ukraine, because what tends to happen, and I don't have data on this, so this is anecdotal, but what tends to happen is that when people don't trust the institution, they believe that there's corruption and self-dealing, it tends to perpetuate the sense that if everybody else is taking advantage, then I'm the only person not, and then I'm disadvantaging myself and my family, and I mean, what's super interesting is that in a lot of places, the entire system is basically set up around the notion that there is a certain amount of corruption happening.

And so, salaries are basically set with the expectation that people are taking enough on the side to make a living. And so, the person who then doesn't is the person who's not making a living wage, right? And so, it just creates this cycle whereby, it’s almost like you can't get by without participating in the corrupt system.

So, I think, you know, you have to kind of erase not only the fact of corruption and self-interest and self-dealing, but also the appearance if you're going to have any credibility or any kind of trust in your institutions and your public officials.

Tatiana Sainati: Well, this red flag I think goes along with transparency and conflicts of interest, but accountability is one that came to my mind looking through this history of corruption.

One because for so long there was absolutely no accountability. And even now, as we touched on some of the prosecutions and investigations that have been going on into Yanukovych have been kept secret. I think that is another just really critical element. You can't root out corruption if you don't have accountability and an honest reckoning of what happened. And I personally think that people want that, and they respect that. They respect when someone can stand up and say, “Yes, this happened and here's what we're doing to fix it.” Curious to hear your thoughts on that one.

Diana Shaw: You know, I think Ukraine, and in particular Zelensky, is in a really tough spot right now because this is not the far off past, this is pretty recent past that we're talking about. And at the same time, you know, he's trying to demonstrate to the world that Ukraine is embracing this change and that it has made all of these strides in terms of getting on top of corruption.

So, it doesn't really surprise me, I guess, that now is not the time that he would like to be, you know, owning some of this stuff, even though he's not responsible for it.

I think if, if this were under different circumstances, if there were not a war, if he were not so dependent on support from the West, and everything that's tied to that. I think maybe we might see more willingness to embrace and own that history. But I do think he's maybe between a rock and a hard place on this. I totally agree with you that it is so important to be accountable and that people do want to see their leaders fully accept this and bring it out into the open and acknowledge where mistakes have been made and really talk about what they're going to do differently to avoid it in the future.

While I do think, sort of like in the abstract, it's a missed opportunity. I think these circumstances are sort of unique, and so I can understand maybe why in this case there's not that full reckoning happening, but maybe it's going to come down the road. I think we can wait and see.

Tatiana Sainati: I really hope so. Well, as always, the scandal has a lot more to it than we were able to cover today. So, we'll be posting some additional information in the show notes, and we might come back and explore another angle of the scandal on future episodes. I think the Ukraine is going to be a place to watch from our perspective, but until our next episode, I want to thank our listeners for joining us for today's episode and invite you back next month when Diana will be sharing another salacious story of corruption. Any teasers?

Diana Shaw: So, I actually will share some teasers. We're going to build off of this episode where we touched on institutionalized crime. We're going to take it to Brazil, where we will be exploring how institutionalized crime affected Brazil with Operation Car Wash.

Tatiana Sainati: Can't wait.

Diana Shaw: It's really good.

Tatiana Sainati: If you like this podcast, please let us know by liking us on whatever listening platform you use and maybe even sharing us with friends, family, or anyone you know who, like us, loves a good story about people behaving badly. In the meantime, be good, and we'll see you next month. Bye.

Diana Shaw: Bye.

FIFA: Soccer, Scandal, and Sportswashing

On this latest episode of Wicked Coin, join hosts Diana Shaw and Tatiana Sainati as they unravel the intricate web of deceit behind the world's largest sports scandal - the FIFA corruption case. From secret bribes and lavish lifestyles to the shocking involvement of global figures like Vladimir Putin, this episode exposes the dark side of the beautiful game. Discover how a seemingly noble mission to promote soccer turned into a tale of greed and betrayal that highlights the true cost of corruption.

For more on the FIFA scandal, check out the Netflix documentary "FIFA Uncovered", "Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal" by Ken Bensinger, and "The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection" by Diego Gambetta.

The "Fat Leonard" Scandal

In their debut episode, Tatiana and Diana dive into the infamous "Fat Leonard" scandal that rocked the U.S. Navy. From bribery, to blackmail, to prosecutorial misconduct, they unpack how a massive corruption scheme unfolded due to critical failures in oversight. Join the conversation exploring how to promote transparency, improve accountability, and rebuild trust and credibility at our nation’s highest levels of defense.

For more on the Fat Leonard scandal, check out "Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy" by Craig Whitlock and the Fat Leonard podcast on Brazen+.