The tale of “Londongrad” is one of the most fascinating stories of the post-Cold War era. Indulging Kleptocracy (Oxford, 20225) shows how British professionals enable their postcommunist elite clients by hiding, protecting, and legitimizing their kleptocratic wealth and establishing status and influence for them in the West. The book dives deep into the world of the enablers in nine professional sectors to show how they brought postcommunist kleptocracy to the UK and defeated the British authorities attempts to regulate their work and enforce the law. 

John Heathershaw is Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter. His research addresses conflict, security, and development in global politics, especially in Central Asia. He is author of Post-Conflict Tajikistan (Routledge, 2009), Dictators Without Borders (Yale, 2017), The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem (Chatham House, 2021) and over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles. John is currently the principal investigator of a research project which seeks to identify the form and dynamics of kleptocratic enabling networks via an analysis of the data of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. 

Thomas Mayne is a Research Fellow at University of Exeter, and a former Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Prior to this, he worked as a Senior Campaigner at anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, where he was responsible for the group’s reports on Central Asia and Eurasia. His current research project builds on his expertise in analyzing kleptocratic flows by looking at networks of professional service providers that enable illicit flows from corruption hotspots.

Tena Prelec is an Assistant Professor in Politics and IR at the University of Rijeka’s Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS SEE). Her research focuses on transnational linkages in corruption studies and examines the intersection of illicit finance and geopolitical competition. She has held positions at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and earned her PhD from the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. She is currently Work Package leader of the Horizon Europe project GEO-POWER-EU, which looks at EU enlargement in a deteriorating geopolitical context, and Principal Investigator of the GI-ACE project Lawyers: Gatekeepers, Enablers or Technicians?