As Syria struggles to get on its feet after decades under the tyrannical father-son Assad regime, we're revisiting a story from 2024 when those desperate to leave Syria were preyed upon by a human smuggling ring. The story was brought to light by Mahmoud Elsobky, one of the two winners of the 2024 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Originally posted on Jul. 10, 2024

We are revisiting an episode from 2020 with David Shimer. David discusses his book that reviews the century of covert election interference by Russia and the U.S., the known impact of Russian meddling in 2016, and their growing capacity to interfere in future elections.

With these issues back in the headlines, we’re revisiting an important discussion with Leonid Volkov, originally recorded in 2022 at the TRACE London Forum. Leonid is the Political Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and was Alexei Navalny’s former Chief of Staff. He discusses the role of corruption in Putin’s Russia as well as the impact of sanctions and the toll that rampant corruption is taking on Russia.

This episode was originally published on 5 October 2022.

This podcast is based on TRACE's recent Year in Review webinar with Kate Atkinson. Kate is a Member and the Chair of Miller & Chevalier, based in their DC office, and she reviews for us the FCPA highlights for 2024.

We’re reposting our 2017 podcast with Adam Davidson of the New Yorker who joined the podcast to talk about his research into the baffling Trump Hotel deal in Baku.

This episode was originally published on 14 June 2017.

In light of last week’s inauguration, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast episode with Dan Alexander, author and senior editor at Forbes, discussing his book about Trump’s business deals with foreign entities, including one very strange deal with the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.

This episode was originally published on 7 October 2020.

This inauguration week, we're revisiting a 2020 podcast on President Trump's assault on the civil service. In this episode, Harvard law professor, Matthew Stephenson, provides some context for understanding Trump's executive order on the civil service and then lists the three primary threats it poses for corruption. A more detailed discussion can be found on his Global Anticorruption Blog.

This episode was originally published on 4 November 2020.

Our guest today, Dr. Rebecca Connolly, joins us to discuss her work on the legal governance of outer space relating to militarization, security and commercialization, drawing some interesting parallels to the law of the sea and making it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Karina Litvack joins the podcast to share her insights into climate governance based on her extensive board experience in the oil and gas sector and her role as the Founding Chair of the Climate Governance Initiative. 

As is holiday tradition, we're revisiting our podcast with Peter Hellman, who describes Rudy Kurniawan’s audacious scheme to defraud wine collectors in his excellent book, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire.

This episode was originally published on 20 December 2017.