Combating Kleptocracy - Human Rights Foundation

About

Combating Kleptocracy shines a light on how corrupt actors around the world use their illicit finances to undermine democracy and strengthen authoritarianism.

If there’s one link between every modern dictatorship, it’s corruption. Every authoritarian government relies on illicit finance and trans-national money laundering to hide its wealth and target its enemies. And all too often, the tools these regimes use are found in democracies, which have welcomed their dirty money.

Launched in 2023, this program reveals how these networks operate and who has benefited the most. Combating Kleptocracy dives into the links between illicit finance and kleptocrats — from shell companies to dictatorial donations, from private enterprise to suspect finance — and explores how to disrupt these networks.

Our Initiatives

Activations

HRF's Combating Kleptocracy Program brings the threats of international money laundering networks to audiences in the real world, including the acclaimed 'Dictator's Laundromat,' which highlights all the ways dictators around the world move their money and influence into democracies.

Publications

In 2024, the Combating Kleptocracy Program published the acclaimed book Foreign Agents, the first investigation into how the U.S.'s foreign lobbying industry has spent years aiding dictators, threatening democratic movements and entrenching despots around the world.

Original Investigations

HRF's Combating Kleptocracy Program conducts a range of original, ground-breaking research, such as on how the UAE's dictatorship has authored the most successful political influence and interference campaign in the U.S.

Reports

Dictators and Diplomas: Why Foreign Autocracies Funding American Universities Threatens Democracy, Destroys Academic Freedom, and Entrenches Anti-Democratic Regimes

For years, foreign dictatorships and their proxies have searched out any number of ways to influence policy and discourse in the United States. From hiring fleets of lobbyists to setting up dark money networks, from bankrolling sports leagues to launching disinformation campaigns on American social media platforms, from backing strategic investments to hiring consulting firms and white-shoe law firms, the list of targets is lengthy.

Infiltrating America: How the United Arab Emirates Launched an Unprecedented Political Interference Campaign in the United States

For years, one foreign dictatorship has overseen an unprecedented interference effort aimed at the heart of the U.S. political process, unleashing squadrons of lobbyists while launching illicit campaigns that reached directly into the highest ranks of the American government.

News & Media

We’ve overestimated Russia for too long

Don’t Forget the Many Ways Russia Tried To Justify Invading Ukraine

How Years of American Policy Bumbling Boosted Putin

America’s Adversaries Are Targeting Its Cities and States

The Indictment of Eric Adams Shouldn’t Surprise Us

Despots and oligarchs have many means to meddle in American politics

Author ‘honoured’ to be blacklisted by Vladimir Putin

One big source of U.S. political corruption: Selling out to foreign adversaries

In America, there is finally good news on the anti-money laundering front

Russia has stifled another Putin opponent. Here’s how the West might help him

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History

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Other Programs

This program comes at a moment where AI tools made by Chinese actors with connections to the CCP are some of the most performant in the world, displacing tools made by corporations and associations inside liberal democracies.

Art is a powerful tool for dissent in closed societies, provoking constructive dialogue and creating space for debate beyond mainstream bodies of political discourse. Authoritarian governments around the world recognize the power of art as a conduit of change and systematically persecute, repress, or censor artists to silence political dissent.

All governments, especially those of dictators, frequently debase, manipulate, demonetize, and surveil currencies, confiscate property, and freeze the bank accounts of people they don’t like. Dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, and nonprofit organizations in authoritarian countries face enormous obstacles just to receive donations and pay bills.

So for many years, North Korean defectors have organized efforts to smuggle outside info into North Korea on USB drives to counter Kim Jong-un’s constant propaganda.