Trump’s Most Reclusive Benefactor
by Arnav Binaykia
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The champagne corks are popping in penthouses from Moscow to Caracas tonight. Oligarchs maybe can finally get their yachts back, and kleptocrats worldwide are updating their Zillow searches for Miami beachfront property.
Why? Our sources say that just after 7:30 p.m. in Washington, D.C., yesterday, Trump's newly appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi sent out an email announcing the immediate closure of the Department of Justice's Kleptocracy Initiative and its associated task force – the very unit responsible for making life difficult for the world's most creative accountants and their politically-connected clients.
Below the radar, however, is an even more alarming development. Sources say one of the key objectives behind this sudden move is to gain control of what's believed to be a multi-billion dollar forfeiture fund under DOJ control. This fund, historically used to return stolen assets to victim countries, will now reportedly be redirected to what Bondi's memo cryptically describes as "other" law enforcement purposes.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter say this is code for funding new detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay and Texas. Nothing says "America First" quite like using money recovered from foreign corruption to build domestic detention centers.
The implications are staggering. Since its launch in 2010, the Kleptocracy Initiative has recovered billions in stolen assets – from Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha's $458 million to record-breaking recoveries in the 1MDB scandal. The unit's work was fundamental in the largest corruption case in history: the $4.5 billion looting of Malaysia's 1MDB fund, where money meant for development was used to buy everything from Van Gogh paintings to funding "The Wolf of Wall Street" (because apparently, regular money laundering wasn't meta enough).
No other country on earth – by a long shot – had the guts, funding and gumption to take on international corruption cases. Someone once told me that the UK's National Crime Agency has an annual £1 million budget to pursue international corruption cases. One of the things that makes the DOJ so formidable is its ability to build cases on criminals using US dollars or sending their data through the United States.
For those who've watched anti-corruption efforts crumble before, this moment feels eerily familiar. I'll cite one from the DOJ's biggest case: 1MDB.
In July 2015, then-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak executed a similar playbook when the 1MDB investigation closed in on him. Within 48 hours, he dismissed Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail (who was investigating $681 million in Najib's personal accounts), fired his Deputy Prime Minister for criticizing the scandal, and effectively neutered the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission through transfers and intimidation.
Trump and Bondi's dissolution creates immediate practical chaos. Prosecutors handling active kleptocracy cases have been left in limbo – do they simply drop their cases? If a foreign corrupt criminal walked into the U.S. today, would they simply walk free? (Asking for a friend, several oligarch subscribers may be asking.)
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