In his farewell address, President George Washington warned about “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” In Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) recent statement supporting some provisions in the For the People Act (S. 1), he voiced a modern echo of Wa [...]
Introduction and Summary In his push for bipartisan efforts on voting rights legislation, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) warned that “the lack of transparency in many campaign finance rules provides multiple avenues for foreign and national adversaries [...]
The U.S. government must reimagine FinCEN as an essential one-stop shop to support law enforcement with sophisticated financial intelligence and formidable analytic capabilities, Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph and Gary Kalman write in Foreign Po [...]
Speakers: Karen Donfried President, The German Marshall Fund of the United States Mária Kolíková Minister of Justice, Slovak Republic Josh Rudolph Fellow for Malign Finance, Alliance for Securing Democracy Moderator Jonathan Katz Senior Fellow and D [...]
Nobody has suffered serious legal consequences for actively welcoming—some say aiding and abetting—Russian interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections, or for having asked the presidents of Ukraine and China to similarly interfere. One reason for th [...]
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph joined Chatham House for an event that explored how the Kremlin uses Russian money in London to exert influence over British politics. The United Kingdom has long attracted money from criminal and Kremlin-linked so [...]
Summary Recommendation Within the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Treasury Department should publish its first-ever National Corruption Risk Assessment about the financial networks of oligarchs and kleptocrats, reviewing case st [...]
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph joined "The Power Vertical" to discuss how the Biden administration can combat corruption and kleptocracy. Russia’s banks can be as dangerous as Russia’s tanks. Corruption is the new Communism. The Kremlin’s black [...]
This was originally published on GMF's blog. It was written by Rachel Tausendfreund based on contributions from Kristine Berzina, Jessica Brandt, Peter Chase, Sam DuPont, Lindsay Gorman, Jacob Kierkegaard, Karen Kornbluh, Nad’a Kovalčíková, Ian Less [...]
Executive Summary In recent years, U.S. government officials have normalized a damaging notion: that soliciting or participating in foreign interference in a U.S. election will not be prosecuted. Foreign governments from Beijing to Moscow and else [...]
Executive Summary: Mobilize the Regulatory Arsenal The incoming Biden administration has signaled through speeches, articles, and interviews that one of its top policy priorities will be combating corruption and kleptocracy.See Vice President Joe [...]
Testimony before the European Union Parliament, Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation December 2, 2020 Josh Rudolph, Fellow for Malign Finance, Alliance for Securing Dem [...]
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph joined "The Power Vertical" to discuss the findings of his new report, Covert Foreign Money. They’ve granted loans to a French political party. They’ve spread around oil profits in Italy. They’ve given material s [...]
A Soviet adage suggests Westerners play chess proficiently through the opening and middlegame, only to be overtaken by a surprisingly offensive Soviet endgame. In the days ahead, Russia might stage a come-from-behind endgame attack in the aftermath [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph joined Levi Gundert and Jesse Spiro in a panel discussion on the role of cryptocurrency in election interference at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph joined Gemma Rogers of Fintrail and Edward Lucas of CEPA to discuss how covert foreign money has undermined the democratic process in North America and Europe in a panel at the Royal United Services Institu [...]
Malign Finance Fellow Josh Rudolph gave a lecture entitled "Subverting Elections: A Toolkit of Foreign Interference" at Middlebury College's Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs. [...]
On October 1, 2020, the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the European Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki hosted a virtual discussion on the threat malign financial activity poses to democracies across the transatlantic space. Elle [...]
This week, GMF's "Out of Order" hands the mic over to Josh Rudolph, the Malign Finance fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the author of the new report, Covert Foreign Money. Josh is joined by Luke Harding, best-selling author and seni [...]
Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph discusses how the rise of foreign funding distorts politics in the West, drawing on our recently released paper Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interferen [...]
Josh Rudolph appeared on the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University's The Europe Desk podcast to discuss malign finance in politics. [...]
Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph appeared on C-SPAN to discuss malign finance and its role in foreign interference. Related reading: Covert Foreign Money by Josh Rudolph and Thomas Morley [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph gives readers a short introduction to his recently released paper Covert Foreign Money: Financial Loopholes Exploited by Authoritarians to Fund Political Interference in Democracies, co-authored with Resear [...]
Executive Summary In addition to more widely studied tools like cyberattacks and disinformation, authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China have spent more than $300 million interfering in democratic processes more than 100 times spanning 33 [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 31, 2020. After the United Kingdom’s parliament released its recent report on Russian interference in British democracy, front-page headlines howled that it damns the governme [...]
This article was originally published as a GMF Transatlantic Take on July 23, 2020. With mounting evidence that Russia regularly interferes in British democracy while the U.K. government “actively avoids” investigating, the country needs a proven pl [...]
Transatlantic sanctions from the United States and Europe put real pressure on Russia to curb its aggression. American political leaders should urge Europe to refrain from lifting economic sanctions on Russia at this point in time and should signal [...]
Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph discussed the issue of party financing from foreign resources on The Center for International Enterprise's podcast, Democracy that Delivers. [...]
It is now abundantly clear that covert foreign money gets weaponized against our democracy, Fellow on Malign Finance Josh Rudolph said on a Hudson Institute panel titled "Securing America's Financial Borders." [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph writes in Just Security about the need for a holistic national security approach to campaign finance enforcement, in light of the recent arrest of two businessmen charged with funneling foreign donations to [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance discusses the bipartisan promise of new beneficial ownership legislation introduced in the Senate in The American Interest. [...]
ASD Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt and Malign Finance Fellow Joshua Rudolph argue for a new, holistic campaign finance framework for countering foreign political contributions. [...]
This article was originally published as a German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Take on August 22, 2019. This weekend may be the first time in the history of the G7 that the group meets without agreeing on a joint statement. That’s partly because t [...]
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to discuss ways to combat kleptocracy through financial reforms such as beneficial ownership and money laundering. Beneficial ownership is particularly important because kleptocrats an [...]
ASD Fellow for Malign Finance Josh Rudolph argues in The Hill that the U.S. government that beneficial ownership legislation banning anonymous shell companies would help defend America from foreign interference. [...]
Today, the Senate Banking Committee will hear outside perspectives on the collection of beneficial ownership information. This hearing is well-timed, as momentum is building in both the House and the Senate to outlaw anonymous shell companies. For e [...]