Frank Vogl: Understanding the Kleptocrats and Their Enablers

“Too often, people think of corruption as something that happens somewhere else: in Russia, in authoritarian regimes.”

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for length.

On December 15th, Frank Vogl sat down with Merion West and Andrew Scott to discuss his latest book The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption—Endangering Our Democracy, which was released in November. Mr. Vogl is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Government at Georgetown University and co-founded and now chairs the Partnership for Transparency Fund, an international, not-for-profit, anti-corruption organization. Mr. Vogl and Mr. Scott discuss highlights from the book and explore the most effective strategies for combatting corruption, both in the United States and abroad.

Can you start off by telling me a little bit about your background?

Yes. I grew up in the U.K., graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Leeds, became a foreign correspondent for Reuters, based in Brussels, then moved to be the European business correspondent of The Times of London, covering all of continental Europe based in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1974, I became the U.S. economics correspondent for The Times in Washington D.C. covering the last part of the Watergate scandal and everything thereafter for eight years. I left journalism in late 1981 to become the chief spokesman of the World Bank. Soon after leaving the World Bank in 1990, I joined with a few others to plan the launch of Transparency International (TI), which happened in 1993. Today, TI is the largest global anti-corruption organization, operating in over 100 countries.