Book Launch—Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia

Please join the Open Society Foundations and Alex Cooley for the launch of Cooley’s new book, Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia, co-authored with John Heathershaw.

Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Cooley and Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia’s supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploitation of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, Dictators Without Borders exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

Speakers

• Alex Cooley is director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and a professor of Political Science at Barnard College. He is a member of the Eurasia Program Advisory Board.
• Nargis Kassenova is a member of the Eurasia Program Advisory Board, is an associate professor at the department of international relations and regional studies of KIMEP University in Kazakhstan, and is the director of the university’s Central Asian Studies Center.
• Giorgi Gogia is a member of the Eurasia Program Advisory Board and has been a senior South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch covering Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia since 2006.