Viva Brighton Issue #72 February 2019

ON STAGE
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Misha Glenny
McMafia author lifts the lid on corruption
Last year Misha Glenny’s
book McMafia was
turned into a BBC drama
series exploring the
links between financial
capitalism and modern
day mafia groups.
Following the success
of the show, the author
comes to Brighton to
explain how he lifted the
lid on the world’s most
powerful crime lords.
Where does the story of McMafia start? I
start off by highlighting what a difficult and
confused political situation we are in at the
moment, and then I try to explain how we got
here by looking back 30 years to the fall of
communism. As Central Europe correspondent
for the BBC, I was witness to events as they
happened. Although it was a fantastic moment of
optimism, the problem was that capitalism was
introduced in Eastern Europe very quickly, in a
very disorganised fashion. And it was regulated
and policed by organised crime groups from the
very beginning.
How was this affected by events in the west?
It hooked up with the rise of financial capitalism
which meant that huge sums of money were
suddenly sloshing around the world. So what
you got without people really noticing it was an
extraordinary globalisation of organised crime.
Later on, this started linking up institutionally
with political corruption around the world – to
the extent where we’ve got a president of the
United States and a president of Russia who both
have demonstrable links to organised crime.
How did you persuade people to talk about
this stuff? I can’t tell
you how time consuming
it was. I would plan the
trips months in advance
and I would stay there for
weeks. But in somewhere
like Brazil, for example,
it’s very easy to get people
to talk. People don’t stop
talking in Brazil – and
that includes police,
intelligence agents and
organised crime figures.
What impact has the TV show had? The
television programme had an absolutely massive
impact. And it’s having an impact on policy, the
issues of money laundering, housing and foreign
investment in London. Television changes things
in a way that it’s very difficult for books to do
these days.
What can people expect from your talk?
It’s quite dramatic and I use a lot of audio and
visual material so people get a real sense of what
this world is like. I do a Q&A at the end, and
the questions come thick and fast. I always get
people standing up and asking “what can we do
about this?”
Well, what can we do? Organised crime can’t
function without political corruption, and there
are movements around the world saying enough
is enough. The former president of South Africa
is under investigation, so is the president of
Malaysia. We’ve got a Korean president in jail.
And I think a lot will come out in the wash with
the Mueller investigation into Trump. People are
going to start taking these issues very seriously.
It’ll be huge. Interview by Ben Bailey
The Old Market, 24th Feb, 7.30pm, £17
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