“Michel holds a microscope to [American] hypocrisy… Michel builds his book around two characters, both prolific users of America’s financial-secrecy infrastructure, deftly weaving together their stories and his analysis.... Fluid, coherent and entertaining.”
—The Economist
“Brilliantly clear.”
—Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic
“As Casey Michel’s AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY... demonstrate[s], the US has made it astonishingly easy to evade taxes and launder money. While the term 'tax haven' may conjure images of Caribbean islands and palm trees, Michel... make[s] the case that the world’s leading tax haven is America.”
—New York Review of Books
A “compact grenade of a book.”
—The Australian
FOREIGN AGENTS will be released in August 2024.
FOREIGN AGENTS is a stunning investigation and indictment of the elements in United States' foreign lobbying industry and the threat they pose to democracy.
In FOREIGN AGENTS, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists, and all the damage and devastation they have caused in Washington and elsewhere. From Moscow to Beijing, from far-right nationalists to far-left communists, from anti-American autocrats to pro-Western authoritarians, these foreign lobbyists have helped any illiberal, anti-democratic government they can find. And after decades of success in installing dictator after dictator, and in tilting American policy in the process, some of these lobbyists have now begun trying to end America's democratic experiment, once and for all.
Further Praise for AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY
“Michel masterfully recounts the tragicomic outcomes when outré autocrats meet serviceable financial and legal systems… [Michel] deserve[s] praise for going beyond moralising and pointing out how an industry geared to enabling the corrupt is not just unsavoury but can hurt a country’s real economic prospects.”
“‘American Kleptocracy’ demonstrates that, despite the sincere efforts of public officials of both major parties, often over the course of decades, the US has become the plaything of kleptocrats.... Diligent reporting, rendered... in lively prose.”
“Casey Michel brings home the extent to which the United States has fueled money laundering, corruption, and other crimes plaguing the world. His passionate writing comes from his outrage at what has gone on in our own backyard and his understanding of what is at stake, namely trillions of dollars hidden from our national treasury with help from U.S. banks. Readers will learn why it is critical for Americans to look inward and do more to stop the abuses here at home that are helping to power illicit finance around the world.”
“Michel debuts with a blistering account of how greed, deregulation, and deliberate avoidance have enabled dictators and drug cartels to launder their illicit profits in the U.S…. Through rigorous research and cogent prose, Michel builds a persuasive case that the influx of unregulated money decimates America’s industrial regions and poses a grave threat to democracy. This is a stunning portrait of avarice run amok.”
“A revealing look at the web of financial chicanery that puts the U.S. at the head of places in which to hide ill-gotten gains.... Michel’s diligent dissection is… [an] eye-opening account of laissez faire financial laws and practices that serve the interest of criminals alone.”
“The critical question is: How do we best write about kleptocracy to make it understandable so that it can be effectively combatted? In his excellent forthcoming book... [Michel] provides a persuasive answer. Michel’s genius lies in his narrative, which weaves together the development of U.S. financial secrecy and countermoves with actions in the United States of two of the world’s great kleptocrats.”
“In this clearly-written, compelling and fast-paced book, Casey Michel drills right into the heart of one of the United States’ greatest liabilities: our penchant for easy money. Michel explains the origins and genesis of a home-grown and long-nurtured American illicit finance system that gives safe haven to the plunder of the world’s greedy despots and corrupt officials, as well as our own venal businessmen. The system is complex and also astoundingly simple. America’s hidden kleptocracy is a threat to our legitimate, licit financial system and our democracy. The dirty money sloshing around our system is a vulnerability and a national security threat. Anyone around the world can weaponize it against our institutions. Michel’s book is a clarion call for citizens and those at all levels of government who have not yet realized that we need to clean up our own act to protect ourselves from predatory adversaries.”
“Casey Michel has written a vivid, compelling account of the terrifying march of dirty money. His book helps us understand how some of America’s abiding ideals - property, privacy, philanthropy, free markets, capitalism, even democracy itself - are being hijacked…. As Michel shows, an entire industry of secrecy allows these kleptocrats to reach out from Moscow or Beijing and manipulate the economy, society and politics of the world’s most powerful nation without leaving fingerprints. And they have found so many home-grown allies in this task that it comes to look like an inside job. AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY should be read urgently by anyone who wants to preserve open societies and the rule of law.”
A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY offers the first explosive investigation into how the United States built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known.
For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars, and potentially more, in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sleepy, sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most from modern offshoring also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the United States of America.
“Casey Michel‘s book is a wake-up call: America has become the money laundering capital of the world. The book underlines: If you want to interrupt corrupt money flows you should start in the U.S.”
From anonymous shell companies and legal inventions like “perpetual trusts” to public relations and lobbying shops willing to do anything they can to camouflage the source of the dirty money, the United States’ transformation into the center of global offshoring is complete. And while Donald Trump presented, in many ways, the ultimate culmination of the U.S.’s descent, the country’s trajectory has been decades in the making.
“Casey cuts through the spin, to reveal the inner workings of the American economy. His writing has shown again and again the subterfuges and secrecy at the heart of how money moves through the financial system, and does it with panache, wit, and a blessed aversion to jargon. I always read his work, and can’t wait to read this one.”
AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots; how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.
“Rule-of-law democracies are engaged in a clash of civilizations against international criminals, kleptocrats, and corrupt politicians. Michel exposes the troubling role the U.S. has played in facilitating the dark economy and underscores the urgent need for transparency, reform, and accountability.”
“[Michel] is a masterful storyteller who grips readers with truthful and disturbing accounts of outlandish schemes...eye-opening and comprehensive.”
“Michel’s clear prose helps make a complicated subject comprehensible, and leaves readers with some hope that financial corruption may not be so inevitable after all.”
“For decades, anti-corruption campaigners have targeted far-flung, tropical islands as the root cause of the global money-laundering epidemic. The truth, as Casey Michel demonstrates in his remarkable and perspicacious new book, is the most powerful tools to clean the proceeds of crime can be found in such ‘exotic’ locales as Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming. This is an important and eye-opening book.”
“AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY is essential reading to understand how the U.S. has become the global destination for dirty money. Michel exposes the international shell games that the super-wealthy and their professional enablers deploy to launder and stash cash. He exposes why this matters, as illicit funds disrupt local real estate markets and undermine honest economic activity.”
“There are shades of grey and there is darkness. In AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY, we get to know the dark side of the American legal system, a magnet for kleptocrats from around the globe who are paying handsomely for laundering services offered by an industry of lawyers, real estate agents, auctioneers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public office-holders all the way to the top. Far from being a shining example for the rule of law, in this remarkable and well-researched book Casey Michel shows how the US has taken the top spot at the ease of doing illicit business legally.”
“Casey Michel is one of the United States’ brightest emerging foreign policy thinkers—a scholar, journalist and policy expert who has spent years chronicling the rise of globalized corruption in meticulous detail. In AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY, he provides the definitive account of the defining threat of our era—weaving together an irresistible narrative with a bold but pragmatic agenda for reform that can end America’s complicity in foreign corruption.”
“[Casey Michel is] owed a debt of gratitude by free people everywhere. ”