Very Bad People

The gripping and untold story of how Global Witness have uncovered a worldwide network of highly organised criminality, kleptocracy and corruption and exposed the people behind it

Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. Blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness.

What began as three friends wanting to end the decades-long civil war in far-away Cambodia is now an award-winning organization, Global Witness, dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. VERY BAD PEOPLE is co-founder Patrick Alley’s revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes – and the ‘shadow network’ that enables them.

From their first campaign, exposing how the illegal timber trade funded the genocidal Khmer Rouge, to alerting the world to blood diamonds fuelling war across Africa, Global Witness unravel crooked deals of labyrinthine complexity and encounter well-known corporations whose operations are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents help park dirty money in London, New York, or in offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes.

This book is about following the money, going undercover in the world’s most dangerous places, and bringing down the people behind the crimes.

Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super-villains who bear every resemblance to The Night Manager’s Richard Roper. One dictator’s son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle.