In honor of the extraordinarily courageous and principled life of Alexei Navalny, first poisoned with Novichuk and killed today in Polar Wolf prison, we are reposting our 2021 conversation with his chief of staff, Leonid Volkov.

Leonid Volkov joins the podcast to talk about Putin's obsessive campaign against Navalny, who was first poisoned with Novichok and later imprisoned. Volkov also discusses the deep roots of corruption in Russia and how the west can support Russians determined to end the looting of their country.

Valerie Salembier, former publisher of Harper's Bazaar and founder of The Authentics Foundation, discusses the true cost of counterfeit luxury items: child labor, trafficked labor and organized crime.

This episode originally aired on July 3, 2018.

Investigative journalist Erlend Ofte Arntsen of Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang joins the podcast to discuss his work on the Tinder Swindler story, adapted into a Netflix documentary. Erlend and his colleagues broke the story of Shimon Hayut, an Israeli con man who found women on the dating app, impressed them with private jets and bodyguards, concocted stories about being in great personal danger and then drained their bank accounts and left them with extraordinary credit card debt.

This episode originally aired on February 15, 2022.

Tom Firestone, a partner with Squire Patton Boggs in Washington, discusses the new US Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA). Tom's perspective is especially interesting as he previously served as the Legal Adviser at the US Embassy in Moscow dealing with financial crime there and, in 2018, he wrote an article on what was needed to tackle the demand side of bribery.

François Valérian joins the podcast to discuss the platform on which he ran in TI's recent election, his priorities and his thoughts on the state of global anti-corruption efforts.