193: Patrick Alley on Global Influence (Part II)

Today we welcome Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. 

Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide.

The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels.

They created the Blood Diamond campaign to counter the De Beers diamond cartel and multiple rebel groups in Africa that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. 

Their findings were also critical for getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and trials for crimes against humanity. 

Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans, which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid-August.

This is part two of a two part episode with Mariah Yager from SMA to cohost the discussion on DOD Integrated Influence. 

Patrick Alley:

Global Witness: https://www.globalwitness.org/

Book, Terrible Humans: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/patrick-alley/terrible-humans/9781800962385/ 

Book, Very Bad People: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/very-bad-people-inside-story-fight-against-corruption/

Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/lUIrYBtkfl4 

SMA version of the interview: SMA version of the interview: https://nsiteam.com/smaspeakerseries_31july2024/ 

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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to the Juanes Channel for the intro sample of Desde Que Despierto Hasta Que Duermo. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZCeqUVeRMU

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Transcript

00:00:03    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail dot com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Welcome, Patrick, to the show.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
This is a quick introduction, and then we'll get right into it. Patrick Alley and his team at Global Witness are credited with countering multiple autocrats and kleptocrats worldwide. The most notable is collapsing the Khmer Rouge by exposing the illegal timber trade that was bankrolling the rebels. They created the Blood Diamond Campaign to counter the De Beers Diamond Cartel that used the conflict to fund some of the most brutal civil wars in the late 1990s. Their findings were also critical in getting the U .N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Charles Taylor in Liberia and the war crimes trials for crimes against humanity. Patrick and Global Witness conducted similar operations in Europe and the Americas before he retired and published his first book, Very Bad People, in 2022, and now his second book, Terrible Humans. which is available online and will be in bookstores around mid -August. So, welcome, Patrick. With all the unrest in Venezuela, Ukraine, Le Levant, Africa, we live in interesting times.

00:01:36    PATRICK ALLEY
How are you? I'm good, thank you, and thank you very much for asking me to take part. It's a real privilege. I'm a child of the Cold War, and nuclear war was sort of ever -present when I was younger. We were really quite worried about it. And then the world seemed to be quite a nice place for many years. And it seems we've gone back to Cold War II, which is a bit of a worry. Yeah.

00:02:01    JACK GAINES
The reason I brought you on today is because I felt like EOD and the US government overall struggles with strategic competition. We are in action with Russia, China, the four plus one, basically, trying to figure out how to counter their foreign policy goals. And we're finding that they're... more and more using criminal groups or paramilitary groups that have criminal practices to achieve their foreign policy goals. And North and Central Africa are excellent examples with the Russians and Wagner helping to provide coups and then slowly taking over countries' management so that they can get to the mines and to the timber and then selling that to avoid Russian sanctions for the war in Ukraine. Yeah.

00:02:48    PATRICK ALLEY
In the case of Wagner, and I have to give credit to the wonderful US -based organization, The Century, but I talked to them extensively for my book, Terrible Humans, and the Central African Republic, CAR for short, and how Wagner has sort of infiltrated. And many people in this call may know this well, but it was an extremely clever and strategic operation. Obviously, we all know Wagner is sort of the deniable arm of Russian military or foreign policy. But how they wheedled their way in, the Russian resource of Sochi with the new president promising him arms, and in the end, not all of the subjects of that conversation were made public, but what obviously transpired, was the Russians did everything for that guy. So first of all, they gave him personal security through Wagner. Wagner created a troll farm, and so they started manipulating public opinion. The Russians created the ruling political party, the Mouvement de l 'accord, the United Hearts movement in Central African Republic. The national election server is based in Russia. And as they were doing all of this, they were training the army in everything from straightforward combat to torture. And then... Wagner troops were with the army and various rebel groups against other rebel groups throughout Central African Republic, not just trying to win battles, but creating terror. The motto was leave no trace. So mass rape, mass execution was the order of the day. And you're right, they also set up companies, particularly in gold. diamonds and timber. A lot of this obviously became much more relevant when Russia unreaded Ukraine and sanctions started to bite, because these valuable commodities are leaving Central African Republic, as we speak, and making their way, or the money from them making their way to Russia. And when I finished that chapter, before the book was published, Wagner arrived in Niger, and there was a coup, the president was locked up. And I thought to myself, I wonder how long it'll be before the population are waving Russian flags in the streets. And it was the next day. And you think, well, they didn't just arrive overnight. There's something in the planning.

00:05:16    JACK GAINES
Well, you met the guy that goes out there to prep for an event and passes out flags.

00:05:21    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I didn't meet him. I talked to him on Zoom. He was only involved in the Central African example, but it's a really good example. He's called Abdullah Ibrahim. And he was related by marriage to senior people in the government and indeed to the president. And when the new president came in and he was voted in and there was no reason necessarily to think he was going to be awful at that time, this guy went back in and started campaigning politically and building up cells in France, the ruling party amongst the diaspora in France. But then it started getting a bit murky and he was asked, initially to organize welcoming demonstrations so when the first armored vehicles came in from russia they were met by enthusiastic crowds and he was the guy who hired the enthusiastic crowd and bought them the baseball caps and the t -shirts and the flags to wave and gave me the numbers which are frighteningly small i can remember top of my head like 25 30 000 bought a demonstration but then he got even worse and he was asked to impersonate a rebel general, and to call on the killings of these people and those people in order so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:38    JACK GAINES
so that Wagner could take advantage of the populations and the resources in those areas.

00:06:43    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, black ops, which by that time he felt he had no choice but to do because he was in a very bad situation. In the end, he fled and he's back in France. So basically,

00:06:53    JACK GAINES
basically, Wagner came in, they helped with the governance and security by bringing in forces and training troops. But then they got so close and in tight with leadership in the government, they were able to also dictate the policy within that government and then open up new areas for them to exploit.

00:07:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think what's interesting about it is CAR is perhaps the best documented of the countries they've gone into. That's arguable, but I think it probably is. Wagner have a presence. And I was thinking, actually, just over the last day, what can you do about Wagner? And that's maybe the subject of this conversation or another, whatever you like. But one of the things I didn't think of, because it hadn't happened very often, is what happened in Mali over the last few days, where Wagner actually lost on the battlefield. And I think quite a few Wagner troops were killed. And that's not a common thing. Usually they've had the upper hand. So maybe there's another way.

00:07:57    JACK GAINES
And do you think that is more of an opposition leader frustrated with doing neocolonial control of the region? Do you think that's a reaction to that? Because I know the Tarigs are famously anti -government in most countries.

00:08:11    PATRICK ALLEY
Yes, I think they are. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question. And of course, there were links with al -Qaeda, IS, etc. So it could be any number of reasons. I think going to the point you're making, which I think is the really important one about neocolonialism, is that's exactly what Russia is doing. They were doing it in Libya and Syria way before the invasion of Ukraine. But with the invasion of Ukraine, it's become probably much more important to them, I think, because of the resources that Africa holds. So in a sense, it's straight back to the colonialism perpetrated by the British, the Belgians, the French, the Portuguese a century or more ago. It's the same thing. And it's just as brutal. And it's just as essential. And the global north wants those resources. And I think those countries that we've talked about are important in their own right from a resource perspective amongst others. But if you start looking at places like DR Congo, which possesses two -thirds of the world's cobalt, essential for the energy transition, if the same thing happens there, and I believe Russia did sign a military pact with the Congolese government over the last few months, then, you know, you've got a globally significant problem.

00:09:27    JACK GAINES
Right. And we also had talked in the past about how you and Global Witness have also mapped some of Wagner's networks for getting either the resources out or funneling money to Russia in order to avoid sanctions that are going on with Ukraine. I remember you mentioning a gold transfer in the UAE, which now has stopped, correct?

00:09:50    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I mean, UAE, I think, is a very good point to raise because it's kind of mafia central, isn't it? It's where you want to go if you want to launder money or launder resources. So I know the US were particularly looking at the activities of a guy called Colotti, who was one of the major gold refiners in UAE, and literally billions of dollars worth of cash transactions, people actually coming off the streets with gold and walking away over a short period of time with billions of dollars for cash. But I think it goes further than that, because one of the things I mentioned in the book, and this was something I think it was CBS News tracked, is that one of the Aleutian 76 transport planes based in CAR flew into the UAE. They tracked it going there. Another Aleutian 76 flew from Russia to UAE, and those planes shared a runway for eight hours. Then they went back to where they came from. No one actually knows. what happened but my suspicions would be that resources were going out arms or whatever were coming in right in your book you were talking about how small banks in the car were being super funded with millions of dollars those monies were then transferred up into was it russia or was that other points basically well actually it was russia trying to bring money with the exchange of money and and the problem that russia had with that

00:10:58    JACK GAINES
your book you were talking about how small banks in the car were being super funded with millions of dollars those monies were then transferred up into was it russia or was that other points basically

00:11:08    PATRICK ALLEY
that other points basically well actually it was russia trying to bring money with the exchange of money and and the problem that russia had with that was that because most of the correspondent banks, and I think all of the correspondent banks, of banks in CAR are based in France, which theoretically gives the French authorities the ability to monitor transactions. And they thought, well, how are we going to get around that? And then they thought, okay, let's fly the money in by private jet, which is what they resorted to doing in the end.

00:11:37    JACK GAINES
So with Global Witness, they're on the ground where they know people and they've got connections and they're building a case. through these observations on people like Wagner. So can you tell us a little bit about the investigative process and then Global Witness's advocacy process to different partners, either law enforcement or a national partner, and how they use that to create change? Yeah, certainly.

00:12:06    PATRICK ALLEY
I mean, I could give a couple of examples because when we started just over 30 years ago, we had no experience in this sort of stuff. It was just a... a crazy idea in Three Beatles, and we kind of made it up as we went along. But you mentioned in your introduction the work on blood diamonds. And we heard that diamonds were coming out of the Civil War in Angola.

00:12:24    PATRICK ALLEY
heard that diamonds were coming out of the Civil War in Angola. We have looked at Sierra Leone and Liberia, which were all civil wars going on at that time in the late 90s. Diamond -funded wars, and it wasn't actually widely known. It wasn't secret particularly, but not widely known. And it certainly wasn't known how it worked. And we thought those diamonds are flooding into Europe. You know, the biggest entrepreneur for diamonds in the world is Antwerp. So Angolan gems were coming into Antwerp, but nobody knew how they were getting there. It was magic. Magic. And the Belgian authorities were very tolerant of it because it was big business. And so at that time, 80 % of the world's rough diamonds were traded by one company, Tobias, creators of the diamonds of forever. And, you know, diamond being this symbol of love. And so we thought, well, if 80 % of the world's diamonds have been transported by De Beers or bought by De Beers, rather, then they must know something about it. But, of course, they weren't telling. And they told us things like, well, you can't tell where a rough diamond comes from. But we were talking to geologists who were saying, well, you can tell to the mine almost where they come from. So the geologists at De Beers were saying something else. Then we found a book. confirmed what we suspected and written in 1932 by De Beers. So they knew well what they were doing. Our first investigations were kind of going undercover with secret cameras and that, looking at this Khmer Rouge timber trade in Cambodia and Thailand. But you couldn't do that with the diamond industry. It was too closed. Everyone knew each other. We could blag about being traders in tropical timber, even if we knew nothing about timber, but you can't do that with diamonds. And what we simply did was to look at De Beers' annual reports for a period of years throughout the 1990s and what they said. And then we looked at the number of civilians killed in the civil war in Angola during the same period. And so, for example, in 96, 97, I think De Beers' report said, we're purchasing X amount of diamonds from Angola as a testament to the strength and skill of our buying teams. But during that same year, something like 300 ,000 people were killed in a war. And so we put a report together, simply 14 pages or 12 pages, which made those comparisons and brought it out in the open. And what was on our side with this is, for some reason, people find diamonds sexy. It immediately became a news story. And this is when Global Witness had no public profile. The report came out by complete coincidence on the day the Angolan Civil War peace talks collapsed. And so journalists were scrambling for story and it became very big news. And in hindsight, the way I look at this, there are some campaigns you kind of know you're going to win because the argument is so clear. Like no businessman or woman can stand up and say, it's actually okay to trade in diamonds even though all these kids are getting their arms and legs cut off by the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. You can't do that. Very quickly, in this scheme of things, just a few years, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme on Complic Diamonds is brought in far from perfect. And that's the story in itself. So that was kind of a clear example, a slightly more complicated one.

00:15:43    JACK GAINES
one. Well, first, Patrick, before we go there. So basically, you guys did field research. You did intelligence collection on what was going on, the current conditions. And then you took that evidence packet. And you did public exposure in order to shift the market's behaviors away from all of these groups that were using violence in order to collect diamonds. I'm just trying to show the collection and the influence that you did in order to achieve that.

00:16:15    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, so well asked. I should have said that, taking it for granted. That's okay. Yeah. So half of what we do, we're an investigative organization. So half of what we do is try and get as much evidence as we can to prove whatever case it is we're looking at. And the cases we choose are not random. In this case, natural resources and conflict. So we started off looking at timber and conflict, then diamonds and conflict. So this is a big difference, I think, between often what government intelligence agencies and we do, is that intelligence can be used by government, but we can only succeed with evidence. If we say something might be happening, then no one's going to listen. We're going to prove it's happening. So we have to get that evidence and then use it in the right places. There's no point in having it if you can't use it. So half the job is evidence, half the job is creating change. And each case is different. Who is it that can create that change for you? And in this case, we looked at the major markets for members of the UN Security Council, because You know, all the time we were doing this, there were hundreds of thousands of people dying in wars in West Africa. Getting the media to report on it, and that's not just because you want to get your name in the paper. It's because if something's reported on, then government ministers generally assume that voters are interested, even if they're not. And so they feel compelled to do something, to be seen to do something. That's my kind of unprofessional view, but I think that's kind of how it works.

00:17:47    JACK GAINES
I call it exposure and stigmatization. That's what we used in Afghanistan with the Taliban. We would expose some of the things they were doing in villages that were in the outer reach that they didn't think we had people in. And we used that to warn local leaders of other villages so that as the Taliban negotiated with them, can say, hey, by the way, I know you say that this moderate mosque is open or you'll allow public weddings, but we're seeing that you're shutting these very same things down. in these villages. So the collection of information and then exposing someone in order to elicit change is very powerful. And then you also have worked with law enforcement agencies, State Department, and as you said, the UN, so multinational agencies as well.

00:18:31    PATRICK ALLEY
well. Yes, indeed. And the Liberia example I was going to mention is just an example. And we're going back a bit, but the principle remains the same, where One of those civil wars was in Liberia. Charles Taylor was this terrible reputation. He was bankrolling the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone where, you know, women, kids, men were having their arms cut off by the RUF rebel group. And he had been funded sort of most famously by diamonds and the UN sanctioned diamonds. But then he fell back on the country's rainforests and started exporting timber. From then on, from about 99, For the next few years, Timber was bankrolling Charles Taylor in his war. And we thought, well, how can we stop that? First off, we need to find the scale of the trade. But we couldn't go to Liberia at that time. If we had gone, we would have been killed, almost certainly. But this is an important factor here. We were contacted by a Liberian activist, a courageous guy called Silas Siakor, who ran a very small environmental group in Liberia, despite the terrible situation that was there. And he said, you know, what can we do about this? And cutting a long story short, we managed to get funding to him. Doing all of that stuff was very tricky, going to the ivory coast, meeting him outside Liberia, giving him a wad of cash. And he got his team to infiltrate the main ports in Liberia. So we knew how much timber was coming out. Also, the guy got a job in the main timber company, and that was run by a guy called Gus Kurnhoven. since convicted for all of this stuff, who was Taylor's right -hand money provider. And so we knew how much timber this company was producing and where it was sending it to, how much it was worth. So we had, over a period of time, I'm simplifying it, but really good information, provable information, cargo manifests everything. What can we do with it? Because the tools at our disposal have varied, but... Liberia was a pariah state. It didn't get any foreign aid. The only foreign trade it had was the timber trade. The timber business has governments wound around its little finger, really. It was hard to stop. What can you do? And we thought, well, there are two things, one of which is to publicize what's going on, which we did in various ways, and the other of which is UN Security Council sanctions. It's the only thing we could think of because the Security Council had a mandate to look at that area because of the war. So we started feeding information into the UN expert panel on Liberia. It took us 18 months to really penetrate the message. Let's speak about old timber, it was diamonds was important, but diamonds had ceased to be important. So we're actually trying to get through that just by provision of evidence. And then the advocacy with the member states of the UN Security Council. And so this was only about 10, 15 people at this stage, and not all of them were working on this. the capitals of the Security Council members, but also to the missions in New York, presenting the evidence, trying to get them to agree that sanctions would be a good thing to do. And then you sort of get some on side, some weren't on side. One thing that we could do that governments couldn't do was actually share information between missions with their permission. So, well, actually, the UK is thinking of doing this. Oh, really, are they? We could be thinking of doing that. That was really helpful. critical, I think. But it was very slow and frustrating because A, you had to build up that certain critical mass. But then because of the non -permanent members recycling off, then you had to start with the new ones coming on again. So it took us 18 months. But in 2003, the UN Security Council did impose sanctions on Liberian timber, and it was only a masher of a couple of months before Taylor was out of power.

00:22:16    JACK GAINES
I know that NGOs don't always partner with DOD or State Department or aid, but They also do at times. And have you ever seen a moment where you've worked directly with an agency, either requesting information or using information? And one example that I want to bring up is Sea Shepherd from your book. They were hunting an illicit fishing vessel that was destroying partner nations' maritime security by scooping up all the fish in those sea areas. And they were struggling to find the vessel. But in certain points, that vessel was down in the Arctic, and if they had known a person with a satellite, that satellite would have picked that ship up in about two minutes because of the heat signature. Has that kind of thing happened, or is it something that would interest NGOs in partnership with government agencies on like -minded missions?

00:23:13    PATRICK ALLEY
It would certainly interest NGOs. That'd be crazy not to say that. Obviously, satellite imagery is available. publicly, obviously not as high definition as the stuff the US might possess. But it's very expensive and very difficult for NGOs to do, especially smaller ones. So yes, it's definitely of interest. And if one could find the heat signature of a vessel in the Southern Ocean, which is the world's biggest ocean, that would really shortcut work. And I obviously do understand the sensitivities around that. But I'll give another example. in the forest of Cambodia and found a massive scale illegal logging operation. And stuff was being loaded on barges, which were going to Malaysia. And I took the GPS coordinates to photos, whatever. And I was approached by a US agency after that saying, we're really interested in this kind of stuff. They didn't admit they had satellites, but that's obviously what they were talking about. And said, you know, if you could give us the GPS coordinates in the future, we can take a look. I was saying, well, it should be the other way around, because if I've taken a look, I don't need you to look. Yeah, no, that's you're particularly interested. Much better if you put the satellite on the place and tell me where to go. That would be far more useful. But going more broadly on that question, yes, we've worked with the State Department a lot, probably on virtually everything we do, with the Treasury on issues related to money laundering, with USAID, of course, and sometimes with various areas of FBI as well. And sometimes I suspect with defense as well, but not that anyone ever said so.

00:24:47    JACK GAINES
Right. It just seems to me that an NGO's ability to use a network or work with a network that has reach into difficult places, like you were speaking about, would be extremely helpful in understanding what's going on with the situation and getting firsthand reporting.

00:25:02    PATRICK ALLEY
You know, I think that's right, because I think a country like the U .S. has vast resources at its disposal. NGOs very rarely do. But what NGOs can do is, whereas the U .S. is probably looking at the whole world all of the time and in some bits more than others, NGOs are quite specialists usually. You know, when we worked in various places, information of what's on the ground might have equaled what the U .S. had for all I know. So there's definitely room for exchange.
 

00:01:23    JACK GAINES
Mariah, thanks for coming on and joining me in this interview.

00:01:26    MARIAH YAGER
Thanks, Jack. So in a world of social media and AI, what do you see as the most dangerous disinformation methods and operations?

00:01:36    PATRICK ALLEY
We've done quite a lot of work on this. And I think what we've seen on platforms like Twitter, Meta, whatever, despite their claims of managing out dangerous content, if you look at some of the most tense elections over the last few years, like in Kenya, in India, in Myanmar, the amount of disinformation and incitement to violence that's out there is really alarming. And what we've done is to sort of pose as advertisers and create an advert, submit it to the moderators of those platforms and see what happens. And in virtually every case we've done it, adverts basically trying to incite people to extreme violence and hate, get accepted. I'd hasten to add, we withdraw them before they go out. So I think, you know, the threat to democracies globally, I think is one of the biggest, biggest threats that AI and social media bring. And we'll see it, you know, we see Brexit campaign in the UK, the recent general election in the campaign in the UK, and outbreaks of far right violence across Europe. That's, for me, is the most disturbing thing.

00:02:53    MARIAH YAGER
Okay, so Global Witness was founded in 1993. That covers a wide and interesting period of technological revolution. And so I'm curious with how did Global Witness make that change? It seems to me that you guys were literally at the forefront of seeing how this could be useful or hurtful. And I'm curious just how the organization shifted.

00:03:16    PATRICK ALLEY
I mean, you're quite right. The way we can investigate has changed beyond belief. I sort of quote this figure in the book that when we started, there was something like 1 ,500 websites in the world. Now there are one and a half billion. So the way we can get information has changed dramatically. Also, it means covering our tracks is more difficult. We could just print a false business card a few years ago and you'd be all right. But now you have to have a history. But yeah, so for example, we did an investigation shortly about a month after the Russia's invasion of Ukraine. which showed how Total Energy is in France by the world's oil majors. One of its refineries in Russia, in Siberia, was supplying gas condensate to a refinery, which was converting it into jet fighter fuel, which was supplying bases used to bomb Ukraine. And we were doing that to basically say to foreign oil majors, you shouldn't be there. You should not be working in Russia on these issues. We could not have done that investigation. It was public information. But to actually trawl those databases in the time to be meaningful, the way we disseminate our information, we're much more global than global witnesses in those early days, just in terms of using social media responsibly. So just that information gathering has changed. And also a silly example, our first secret cameras were in a kind of bag slung over your shoulder, you know, and you sort of said, well, yes, it's a camera, but obviously it's inside the thing. It's not a secret camera. You can have something that no one will ever suspect and is much better quality. It's much easier and safer to do what we do. Another example, looking at the use of anonymously owned companies to carry out money laundering or whatever, we managed to put the whole Companies House website, which is the UK's register of all companies, feed in certain criteria and work out how many people who ran companies were on sanctions lists, dead, aged three or under. Or one guy who was a director of 9 ,000 companies from a small office in Manchester and so something's dodgy going on there. So that stuff you couldn't have done before.

00:05:21    MARIAH YAGER
In 1993, printer paper still had the perforated edges.

00:05:25    PATRICK ALLEY
Oh, I didn't know how to use the bloody computer, you know.

00:05:29    MARIAH YAGER
So thank you for that. So talking about publicly available information, what are your thoughts on that burden of proof given the advent of publicly available information? propagation of false information, and the use of deep fakes and generative AI. How have these things changed how we prove atrocities?

00:05:51    PATRICK ALLEY
From our perspective, our entire credibility relies on our information being good. And not just our credibility, our ability to exist, because we will be sued for defamation quicker than you can flick your fingers if we defame someone saying they did something they didn't do. So we can only publish what we can prove. So we're rigorous about that and making sure we have all the background information. We still use undercover stuff sometimes, so we might have undercover footage of stuff. We will get documentation. Public record is probably more useful or more believable, trustworthy, whatever. So from that perspective, we have to be rigorous or a reputation shot and we cease to exist and cease to have any influence. In terms of us being fed bad information, which is a risk that we give information to the US government. They need to believe it. Similarly, when we get given information, we need to believe it, which is why we need to do rigorous fact -checking. And that costs us an awful lot of time and an awful lot of money, but it's essential to what we do. From when a report probably takes another four months to get it out, depending on its length and complexity and how dangerous the opposition is.

00:07:04    MARIAH YAGER
That's actually a really good segue into it. Another question about AI and large language models can be used to identify or verify a distribution.

00:07:15    PATRICK ALLEY
We, as far as I know, haven't actually used AI as yet to do that. But looking more globally at the use of AI, I think it's one of the biggest hurdles we face because it's so good. Deepfake, everything else is so good and it's penetrated. everywhere. So I think that's one of the things that we will have to get a lot better at. We're working on it, but we just have to get much, much better at it. But I think this is a challenge for governments, electoral authorities, and everybody right now. So we're not alone in that.

00:07:52    MARIAH YAGER
What else do you see in the near term, or even maybe the median term, of what are the challenges that these type of investigations are going forward?

00:08:01    PATRICK ALLEY
The challenges in investigations going forward?

00:08:04    MARIAH YAGER
Yeah. So in this... type of work, what are the challenges that you're seeing on the forefront?

00:08:09    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, well, what Global Witness is mainly focusing on now are issues often related to the climate crisis, which we see as one of the biggest threats on a whole load of levels, whether that's militarily, politically, whatever. And of course, in terms of a planet we can inhabit, that's just a broad thing. And so we work on various different issues. So we're looking at the fossil fuel industry in Ukraine in particular. We're looking at transition minerals in Myanmar, again critical to the energy transition. And I think to give one example directly related to your question is one of the things we spend a lot of time on is land and environmental defenders. You know, around four people a week, indigenous peoples and others are killed. Usually by industrial activities, a lot of this is happening in the Amazon, in Mexico and Colombia and across the world. And those people are often the guardians of natural resources, better than governments often prove to be. They're amazing sources of information. They're kind of the feet on the ground. They're already there, but they're being targeted in what is a genuine shooting war in many countries. Without them, the tropical rainforest will be gone. And I'm not trying to exaggerate that. So I think... protecting people like that. We're merely, in a way, a conduit of information. We have our people on the ground, but the people on the ground are the ones we need to protect, and they're very often the victims of what you're talking about with disinformation,

00:09:48    PATRICK ALLEY
physical threat, and a whole range of things.

00:09:51    SPEAKER_03
Thank you. Has Global Witness been targeted with any of the disinformation by any of the target governments?

00:09:58    PATRICK ALLEY
Not that I know of. I wouldn't say it hasn't happened, but not that I know of. And we have as yet not published anything which has got a massive pushback saying that was really wrong. But one of our campaigns is on disinformation, as I mentioned earlier. So we have expert people who are always kind of monitoring that kind of stuff.

00:10:23    MARIAH YAGER
SMA is currently working on a project on integrated deterrence, which is kind of the latest buzzword. And so, spoiler alert, we've kind of changed it. We actually think of it more in terms of integrated influence. You have to look across how you're influencing not just an adversary, but whatever behavior you're trying to change. And then also be able to work across the whole government and with allies and partners. So Global Witness, the work you've done, has been doing that. for a long time. So I'm curious, what would be your recommendations as we really are looking at integrated influence?

00:11:00    PATRICK ALLEY
Probably sum it up in three words, which is follow the money. We didn't use that term, didn't even think about it possibly in that way. But others have said that in 1993, when Global Witness was born and Transparency International was founded, it was the birth of the global anti -corruption movement. So a lot of what Global Witness has done has worked on corruption. And that's not just. cash in a brown envelope. It's the corruption of political systems and the corruption of the entire financial sector. And so things that are really important are looking at money laundering. That's how every dirty deal is done. Money laundering requires anonymously owned companies in the US and the EU, not least because our work in Transparency International now in many places have public registries of companies, which is essential. And we used evidence. To get that, you've got to sort of create the example. That's what we do. For example, years ago, proving that the natural gas supply from Turkmenistan to Russia and then to Europe, at one point in Ukraine, long before the invasion, was controlled by a company no one knew who owned it. And it was a guy called Dmitry Furtash we found out since sanctioned post -Ukraine war. Our message was the European gas supply is... It's at the whim of whoever this is. And so I think those messages are really important. I think also the enablers, what we call the pinstripe army of lawyers, real estate agents, company formation agents, who make this whole illicit financial system work. Everything they do looks on the surface as legal, put it together, and they're basically enabling organized crime and variations thereof. And a spinoff from that, of course. is we and others, both in Europe and the US and elsewhere, we showed how much kleptocrats, oligarchs money is in New York real estate, London real estate, art collections, car collections. There's no point in being a billionaire in Ecuador or Guinea. You want to do it in Monaco. So get your money out and live your luxury life elsewhere. We can close those doors together. And that's kind of going back to the thing about an integrated response. You will never stop. corruption, corruption's at root of most of this, but you can make it more difficult to do and far more expensive to do.

00:13:22    JACK GAINES
I guess that's an interesting point. Most of the criminal actors or adversary actors that we know, Russian oligarchs or IRGC family, they live in Western Europe. They go and hide their money in Western banks because they know that Russian or PRC banks will just take them back if that person becomes inconvenient. And so, by making it impossible for them to have that membership at the Monaco Yacht Club or have free access in and out of Europe or shut down their houses in London. Those kind of actions, they remove the demand signal for these criminal actors from doing the things they do because they're going to end up with a lot of money and nowhere to go with it. And so I thought that was a really great point.

00:14:10    PATRICK ALLEY
It's quite right. And I think, you know, We at Transparency International worked on a particular case back in 2016, where a particular oligarch had £400 million worth of central London property. And that led the exposure of that to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, saying, OK, he'd create a public registry of companies and close down that avenue. And then Brexit happened. He resigned. No government after that, since 2016 in the UK, would take that forward until... the invasion of ukraine and then we've got the economic crime bill within a very short space of time and the oligarchs are kicked out of their houses blah blah blah it could have been done six years before but it wasn't because there wasn't a political will because it's nice to have all that money is filling around your capital so those are kind of the challenges they have to get across there was another point that i wanted to bring up and that is protecting investigative journalists because

00:15:02    JACK GAINES
was another point that i wanted to bring up and that is protecting investigative journalists because You had a story about a mafia group in Slovakia, I believe, that killed a couple of journalists. Can you talk a little bit about the need for investigative journalism and how to protect it?

00:15:22    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, certainly, as they include the kind of work of organizations like Global Witness under that banner, because we were all investigators, all the journalists, you know, there are some specializations. But yeah, I mean, the Slovakia's example is really good because you've got a country which is one of the smallest countries in the EU, but one of its stars, one of its economic stars. And a really big corruption problem, this journalist was killed, Jan Kusiak. And the demonstrations, because of the public anger about corruption, led to the downfall of the government within a very short space of time. So that the prime minister went, the police chief went, loads of judges were sort of caught with compromise and went. And that was local journalists under the auspices with the support of the Organised Crime, Corruption and Reporting Project, which is an organisation that works for the State Department a lot and I respect highly. And they managed to expose this vast depths of corruption. And as one of the journalists put it, what they found proves how cheap it was to buy Slovakia in the context of things. Tragically, you know, people did go to jail for it and whatever. The prime minister who was deposed, whose special advisor was a former Italian topless model with mafia links, Robert Fico, was re -elected just in the last few months. He was the guy who just survived an assassination attempt a few weeks ago. So he's back. He's pro -Russia, anti -support for Ukraine, and absolutely linked to mafia networks. He's back in power of a leading European country. So it doesn't always go our way.

00:16:54    JACK GAINES
Well, just because you get a reform. happening doesn't mean that the people that are opposed to it don't continue to work. And that's the vigilance that has to happen with anti -corruption reform. Exactly, yeah.

00:17:05    MARIAH YAGER
Who monitors the NGOs for accuracy, disinformation, and bias?

00:17:10    JACK GAINES
Civil litigation system?

00:17:12    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, I would say that's the most powerful one. There is no government institution that does that any more than they do with journalists. But yes, the threat of defamation, which is known as lawfare, because it's abused terribly. If you start publishing information on an oligarch, then they will come after you. And the UK is one of the worst places in the world to be come after because the system is so rigged against the publishers of information. And so they could close us down. They could close us down even if we are right, except we have to be very rigorous in fact -checking, going through a series of libel lawyers to make sure what we... A saying is as libel -proof as it can be. But if it isn't, we will go down. Undoubtedly, we're against powerful adversaries that money's no object. It's the easiest thing for them to do. So that's our check and balance. And Global Witness spends probably upwards of four, five, six hundred thousand pounds a year just to prevent those cases coming up. If the cases came up, you're into multi -million dollar territory just like that.

00:18:20    JACK GAINES
I think the second half of that would be... having the connections with governments and officials and the media so that as you're campaigning in the court, you're also campaigning politically and publicly so that you build support for your cause.

00:18:36    PATRICK ALLEY
Yeah, that's right. But, you know, governments can't stop the court cases. And there are two cases over the last couple of years in the UK, very high profile, one of a guy called Tom Burgess, who wrote a book about Abramovich, mostly one of the key oligarchs. And he was sued. I can't remember. We're talking tens, if not hundreds of millions. And another journalist called Carol Goldwater, who wrote about Russian funding of the Brexit campaign, the Leave campaign. Those cases were lost by the plaintiffs, but not without an awful lot of stress and heartache. And so the bad guys, the very bad people in my book, are the ones who are trying to shut up people who are trying to speak the truth.

00:19:21    MARIAH YAGER
You wrote Very Bad People 2022. Terrible Humans is coming out here in August. So as you're looking into basically the depths of depravity that are possible in humans, was there anything that surprised you for Terrible Humans and putting the book together?

00:19:38    PATRICK ALLEY
I think I surprised anyone books. Very Bad People was essentially eight stories from Global Witness Casebook. It was not a memoir. And my agent said, write it like a TV series. So I did these chapters, an episode. And I think there were no surprises for me in that because I was involved in most of the stuff there. I think what was really nice was to be able to review for the first time what we'd done. Because we never had that. We've never been navel -gazing, as we call it. What do we do? So it was nice to be able to do that. I think with Terrible Humans, that's when I wrote just over half the stories in other organizations and stories I either didn't know well, I didn't know at all. And I guess not necessarily surprised, but so, so impressed by the skill and dedication and courage of the people doing that work and how similar we all found the problems to be. The difficulty of getting information or to publishing the information or... but also the support that we did get from various people, including within governments. So, yeah, I think it was just nice to look back on one level and then to appreciate how many good people are out there and how they really do need that cooperation to help them do what they do.

00:21:00    JACK GAINES
Okay, I'm going to close up, but I wanted to bring up one point for the audience, and that is, as you are looking for... something beyond work or retirement and you're looking for a cause, these NGOs like Global Witness and Global Integrity, O -Corp, C -Shepherd, they are great organizations that could use people with analytical skills, with coordination skills to support the causes that they do.

00:21:25    PATRICK ALLEY
Well, I really appreciate being asked and I hope I haven't brought anyone sideways. So I appreciate it.

00:21:31    MARIAH YAGER
Really appreciate having you on today. Thanks everybody.

00:21:33    Close
everybody. Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. I'll have the email and CA Association website in the show notes. And now, most importantly, to those currently out in the field working with a partner nation's people or leadership to forward U .S. relations, thank you all for what you're doing. Stay tuned for more great episodes. 1CA Podcast.