Indulging Kleptocracy: British Service Providers, Postcommunist Elites, and the Enabling of Corruption

John Heathershaw is Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter. His research addresses conflict, security, and development in authoritarian political environments, especially in post-Soviet Central Asia. He is author of Dictators Without Borders (2017) and The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem (2021). In 2021/22 he was a senior fellow of British Academy studying relations between Eurasian kleptocratic elites and British professional service providers. Heathershaw is a member of the Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group (AFIWG) of the UK which campaigns for transparency and accountability in British universities’ international relations.

Tena Prelec is Assistant Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe at the University of Rijeka. Her research focuses mostly on anti-corruption and EU politics, with a geographic focus on the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe more widely. From 2019 to 2023, she has been a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where her work centered on transnational kleptocracy and illicit finance. She obtained her PhD from the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC), at the University of Sussex with a thesis on elite transition in successor Yugoslav states. Prelec is also a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) and a Research Associate at LSEE-Research on Southeastern Europe, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tom Mayne is a Research Fellow at The University of Exeter and a former Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is also a former Senior Campaigner at anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, where he was one of the researchers on the group’s reports on Central Asia and Eurasia. He has authored a variety of reports on corruption, kleptocracy, and the UK’s anti-money laundering regulations and legislations, including Criminality Notwithstanding (with John Heathershaw).