Luxury, corruption and regulation

Tereza Østbø Kuldova and Jardar Østbø

This article traces the re-emergence of luxury as a moral and political battleground and shows how sanctions on the extravagant assets of oligarchs expose deep entanglements between wealth, corruption, sovereignty and global governance. It was written with support from the Research Council of Norway under FRIPRO Young Talents, project LUXCORE: Luxury, Corruption and Global Ethics: Towards a Critical Cultural Theory of the Moral Economy of Fraud.

The text was originally published in Norwegian in Arr, Norway’s scholarly journal of the history of ideas. It can be read here.

On 1 March 2022, one week after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden delivered his annual State of the Union address. He declared:

Today, I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have usurped billions of dollars with the help of this violent regime: It's over. (Applause.). (Applause.) The United States Department of Justice is putting together a special unit to hunt down the crimes of Russian oligarchs. We're teaming up with our European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments and their private jets. (Applause.) We're going after their stolen goods.[1]

Within days, Task Force KleptoCapture was in place, a specialised unit consisting of experts in sanctions regimes, anti-corruption, money laundering, confiscation, national security and tax enforcement. Around the same time, the multilateral unit REPO - Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs Task Force, was also established.[2] Both units were tasked with enforcing the new and rapidly expanding sanctions and export restrictions against Russia and seizing luxury assets belonging to oligarchs, corrupt officials and other high-ranking members of the Russian elite. In his speech on 28 April 2022, Biden unveiled an even more comprehensive package of sanctions targeting "the bad guys"[3] - an epithet he dropped after several failed attempts to pronounce "kleptocrats".

Anti-luxury sanctions and moralistic superyacht diplomacy

This marked the start of what would become turn out to be the most comprehensive Western sanctions regime ever. What was qualitatively new was the targeting oligarchs' luxuries as one of the main targets: superyachts, private jets, palaces, mansions, art collections and so on. The EU has taken more or less the same line. In May 2022, export sanctions were introduced on luxury goods worth more than €300, such as art, perfume, cigars and champagne, as well as luxury cars worth more than €50,000 and musical instruments worth more than €1,500.[4] These restrictions were later introduced in Norway as well.[5] Other countries, such as Canada and Australia, introduced similar restrictions in addition to sanctions against specific individuals. Despite the fact that the middle class was also affected (an upper limit of EUR 1,500 on musical instruments means that, for example, a provincial philharmonic will have problems importing a fairly ordinary cello), the stated aim was to hit the corrupt elite around Putin in its soft underbelly - the life of luxury. It was not luxury as such that was to be targeted - the sights were set on luxury consumption that was assumed to stem from corruption. The stinking sewer of oligarch money flowing freely through the pristine financial landscapes of Western jurisdictions was to be stopped, and the luxury assets used to perfume the filth were to be seized. By the end of June 2022, the US Treasury Department reported that REPO had so far managed to block or freeze over USD 30 billion of sanctioned Russians' financial assets, luxury real estate and superyachts. The task force had also immobilised USD 300 billion of the Russian central bank's assets and blocked Russia from Western financial markets.[6] Since then, there have been more actions, and the work is still ongoing. Luxury and corruption have become key elements both in explanatory models for the war and in strategies to counter Russian aggression.

The oligarchs' luxury yachts have been in metaphorical hot water since the start of the campaign, as the authorities designing and enforcing the sanctions have levelled particularly heavy fire at them. Already in a fact sheet accompanying Biden's aforementioned State of the Realm speech, oligarch Alisjer Usmanov's yacht was specifically mentioned.[7] A series of seizures of gigayachts (recreational vessels over 90 metres in length) followed in quick succession, in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Fiji and elsewhere. Igor Sechin (director of state oil company Rosneft and at least previously known as one of Putin's henchmen - known by the nicknames "Darth Vader" and "the scariest man on earth") had his yachts Amore Vero and Crescent (worth USD 600 million and one of the world's most luxurious superyachts) seized during March 2022. In the same month, A, the world's largest sailing yacht, belonging to oligarch Andrei Melnichenko, was seized in Italy. Viktor Vekselberg's Tango was confiscated in April 2022[8] in Mallorca, and Suleiman Kerimov's Amadea was seized in Fiji in early May 2022. [9]

Such a seizure is a very complicated, resource-intensive and often international operation involving specialised investigators, lawyers, prosecutors and, not least, police forces, who must take physical control of the huge vessel. When the Tango was seized, both the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations had agents on the dock to assist the Spanish police.[10] By the time you've secured the right paperwork and crew to take action, the worst-case scenario is that the boat has already cast off. Moreover, a successful seizure is only the first step, as confiscation under US law can take five to ten years to complete.[11] In the meantime, the vessel must be maintained - at the government's expense - while both sides' lawyers do their well-paid jobs. The impact of such seizures on Russian warfare, both in the short and longer term, is highly uncertain. Under former President Yeltsin, "oligarchs" in the sense of business people who own private companies and not just manage formally state-owned enterprises, had their tentacles deep into parliament, the state apparatus and the Kremlin. Some of them even held ministerial posts. Under Putin, however, they have been politically marginalised. The state calls the shots, and business has to comply, not the other way round. U.S. officials who have been challenged on the actual impact of such individual, "smart" sanctions have responded evasively, adding that this is just one step of many.[12] Nonetheless, both President Biden and his press spokesperson have proudly presented seized yachts as trophies.[13]

It is primarily as symbolic actions in the fight against corruption and illegitimate luxury that such operations make sense. At least since Caligula, most wealthy people have had a special fondness for large leisure boats. Gigayachts are luxurious by definition. Size is one thing - for example, Usmanov's Dilbar, at 156 metres long, is only ten metres shorter than the old Danish boat Stena Saga (which can carry 2,000 passengers and over 500 cars). Despite its enormous size (it's 142 metres long) and engine power, the Sailing Yacht A has three carbon fibre sailing masts, one of which is 100 metres high. The name, i.e. "A", probably originates from the desire to be first in everything, including alphabetical ship registers. In addition, yacht owners often spend enormous resources on high-maintenance, leisure-only features such as large swimming pools and spas, locks for mini submarines or panoramic windows below the waterline. Gigayachts tend to have very expensive interiors and art collections that can be more expensive than the yacht itself. In November 2022, for example, the media reported that Alisher Usmanov had had 30 paintings seized, including one by Marc Chagall worth USD 5 million, which he had kept on board Dilbar.[14] Given that such things are kept hidden from public view, it's not known how common it is to store and exhibit art and cultural heritage objects on yachts, but there are indeed strong economic reasons for doing so: it's easier to avoid or minimise taxes and duties if the art is stored on a yacht that can move relatively freely between jurisdictions. Furthermore, art management on yachts is a whole industry, with multiple providers of advisory services, courses and certifications for the crew on board.[15] Specialised professional help is available for acquisition and curation, storage (location, indoor climate, rotation, lighting, crew awareness, protection from indoor drunken football or spoiled children's cereal throwing), security, insurance and, not least, legal issues and compliance, which are imperative when moving such assets around the world.[16] The precious cargo and the paranoia of the owners require very strict and resource-intensive security arrangements. For example, Roman Abramovich's Eclipse has two helipads and reportedly one mini-submarine, and is claimed to have its own air defence system. [17]

Such large vessels also provide the opportunity to alternate between extreme visibility in, for example, Monaco, where there is competition for anchorages that provide the best opportunity for the general public to take notice of the ships,[18] or extreme seclusion in the Caribbean.[19] A gigayacht is as close as you can get to a textbook example of conspicuous consumption.[20] The primary utility value[21] is extremely limited. A large yacht is a complicated and extremely expensive option, both as a means of transport and as a holiday home. Astonishingly often, as on the French Riviera, where many yachts are moored for much of the year, the owners have a mansion a short drive away.[22] In any case, they usually don't have time to use their yachts for more than a few weeks a year. A gigayacht also falls rapidly in price over time and is a very risky investment regardless of sanctions.[23] But it is precisely the wasteful nature of yachts that makes them a favourite object for the very rich. Waste on a particularly large scale is the most obvious way to demonstrate one's almost limitless wealth,[24] and the most effective and conspicuous way to waste money - apart from destroying cash or valuable property - is to own a gigayacht. A 150 metre yacht can cost up to $10 million a year to operate and maintain, including main service and spares.[25] Furthermore, gigayachts are in many ways the trademark of the Russian rich. Before the Ukraine war, there were five times as many gigayachts among Russian dollar billionaires as among their American counterparts,[26] and Russians were overrepresented among the owners of the very largest yachts.[27] In this sense, Russian-owned gigayachts are thus "condensed shit" - symbols of corrupted capital floating freely around offshore and polluting unsullied Western financial structures, such as the Virgin Islands. Andrei Melnichenko, the owner of Sailing Yacht A, is a fertiliser magnate to boot.

In October 2022, a yacht linked to sanctioned Russian steel and mining magnate Alexei Mordashov docked in Hong Kong created diplomatic tensions between the US and Hong Kong; While Hong Kong officials made it clear that they had "no legal basis" to enforce US unilateral sanctions, the US has appealed to the moral obligation and reputational consequences for Hong Kong as the world's financial centre of not supporting and cooperating in the enforcement of US sanctions and of becoming world-renowned as a "safe haven" for corrupt luxury. Predictably, China accused the US of tarnishing Hong Kong's good name and reputation.[28] According to the US, the moral obligation should trump and thus extend far beyond the legal obligations. Adhering to "international standards", demanded by the US, quickly becomes synonymous with adhering to Western morals.

A moral-political comeback

Once again in history, luxury and corruption have been woven into key moral and security policy narratives and discourses of governance, once again the decline, moral corruption and ultimate downfall of the great powers can be traced to elite greed and luxury consumption - and once again there is a need for regulation, through laws and morality. In other words, (illegitimate) luxury has become the foremost symbolic and material manifestation of Russian kleptocracy and corruption, the very source of war and all evil - in the Other. Or as Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa put it in his statement to the Judiciary Committee:

These oligarchs amassed obscene fortunes through corrupt arrangements with the Russian regime - a regime with no respect for the rule of law and steeped in dishonesty, bribery and greed. (...) the estimated net worth of these shameless Russians was approximately $530 billion. (...) This illicit mountain of money is branded with corruption and stained with blood. In this way, these Russian criminals are no different from ruthless, violent drug-trafficking cartels or other sophisticated, moneyed criminals. And like drug cartels, these oligarchs like to spend, hide and launder their dirty money. We've all read about the multi-million dollar luxury yachts that these criminals use to sail around the world, leaving death and destruction in their wake.[29]

Throughout history, luxury has been closely linked to notions of decay and corruption[30] , both in a moral and economic sense, a threat to social cohesion as much as to masculinity and virility.[31] Now we are witnessing the desire for a life of obscene luxury once again being seen as the driving force behind corrupt behaviour. Once again, luxury has been singled out as a corrupting force; once again, luxury has entered the social debate on morality, crime and war; once again, luxury and corruption have been closely linked to theories about the (in)fall of empires; and once again, luxury is to be made the subject of laws, sanctions regimes and great power and security policies.

Even Plato believed that the character of the oligarchs was governed by a love of money and a life of luxury, leading them to neglect sôphrosunê (the virtue of moderation and self-control), which is necessary for a righteous and harmonious life. The result is that the rich lord it over and oppress the poor - a form of government that carries with it the seeds of its own destruction.[32] The corrupting power of luxury has threatened the social order, from Aristotle, via Cicero and through the pre-modern era, from the ancient doctrine of virtue, via Christian morality to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Corruption in the Roman Empire, to take one example, is unthinkable without the moralists' condemnations of the private hydra-like luxury that the censor Cato the Elder was determined to eradicate.[33] Throughout history, luxury has been considered so dangerous, immoral, harmful, socially threatening, downright evil and crime-driving, simply an existential threat to the good social and political order, that it had to be regulated and kept under control through laws, punishment and morality. Hence the infamous (and highly ineffective) "sumptuary laws" that were intended to regulate luxury consumption, prevent and punish offences against established status hierarchies and combat moral decay. "Sumptuary laws" particularly characterised societies undergoing socio-economic change, societies as diverse as ancient Greece, the Roman Empire or the Italian city-states from the 12th century through the pre-modern era in Europe, up to 17th and 18th century England, Norway[34] and Japan. Many of these regulations drew a line between legal or legitimate and illegal or illegitimate luxury consumption (and who could consume what and in what quantities without representing a threat to the social order).[35] It is worth noting that throughout history it has been imported luxuries in particular that have been subject to regulation and criticism, and that the moral decay and corruption resulting from luxury consumption has often been attributed to the influence of the Other. Foreign, corrupting powers have been seen as a threat to the purity and health of the body politic. [36]

The last century has been characterised by both a progressive "demoralisation"[37] and consumer society's so-called "democratisation" of luxury (a term that makes luxury consumption appear both legitimate and accessible to most people despite growing inequality[38] ). The "luxury legislation" that regulated who was allowed to adorn themselves with what became a thing of the past, and to us the 18th century moral debates about luxury consumption[39] seem very foreign. Even in the Soviet Union, the dominant ascetic ideals of early Bolshevism were condemned as early as 1934. The following year saw the opening of the first stations of the Moscow metro, built in an ornamental, palatial style as the ultimate democratisation of luxury - virtually every Muscovite would be able to experience a taste of the luxury that had only been enjoyed by the Tsarist ruling class every day on their way to work or school, as a foretaste of the glories of the coming utopia. In 1936, in the midst of Stalin's purges, at a time of continued food shortages and just a couple of years after millions of Ukrainians had perished in the (man-made) famine later known as the Holodomor, it was deemed a good idea to spend considerable resources on launching large-scale production of champagne - the symbol of the "good Soviet life" for most people. [40]

But in the last couple of years, we have been able to observe how luxury has made a comeback on the international moral-political stage. Luxury is being "remoralised" before our eyes, and a new type of regulation of luxury is emerging. As in previous cases, the regulation applies to "luxury in the wrong hands":[41] even in the infamous luxury legislation of the Italian Renaissance, for example, luxury as such was never considered illegitimate - it was the context, i.e. who consumed luxury and for what purpose, that determined whether it was acceptable or not.[42] In 2022, the hands of the enemy, the corrupt and the criminal are too dirty to deal with luxury (luxury assets are often seized in connection with criminal cases). This regulation tells us more about ourselves and less about the Other. It tells us something about how we perceive, or like to perceive ourselves, how our perception of ourselves depends on and is dialectically connected to the Other, about how we legitimise our own luxury and (over)consumption, how we draw moral and political boundaries, and how we maintain social order and (at least some semblance of) our integrity. Last but not least, it reveals what we disavow, under-communicate or refuse to engage with.

Securitisation of luxury in the wrong hands

It was as recently as 2021 that corruption was for the first time designated as a key "national security interest"[43] for the United States and as a national and existential security threat - it was almost as if in anticipation of the war to come. The transnational fight against corruption, led by both Western governments, multilateral organisations and an enormous number of non-governmental NGOs that have popped up like mushrooms since the 1990s, has thus not only been boosted, but also "securitised".[44] Corruption has been "upgraded" to a threat to sovereignty, the rule of law, and the global political and not least moral order.[45] With this, luxury and luxury consumption (of the corrupt) have also been "securitised", which shines through in the sanctions described in the introduction. Luxury in the wrong hands, and especially lankies whose dirty fingernails have penetrated Western jurisdictions, is considered a threat and security risk. In Biden's "preliminary" security strategy from 2021, a direct line is drawn between corruption and autocracy. This flows naturally with the human rights agenda: "we will defend and protect human rights and fight discrimination, inequality and marginalisation in all their forms".[46] It goes on to say that the US will "defend" and "revitalise" democracy globally and "particularly focus on confronting corruption, which rots democracies from within and is increasingly used by authoritarian states to undermine democratic institutions".[47] Corruption has thus become the missing piece in the picture of a socio-economic as well as political alternative and threat. In this way, corruption is completely externalised. In this picture, corruption has nothing to do with the global economic system or us, but everything to do with autocracy, notorious human rights abusers and especially Russia

Corruption (and not, for example, oligopolistic neoliberal capitalism) is blamed for most problems in the countries of the Other - corruption becomes both cause and symptom. Orientalism and colonial notions of the Other often lurk in the background, as they often do in development aid discourses.[48] It is the Other who brings and spreads corruption. "Corruption" is thus a foreign element that threatens the social order. This dynamic was already present in the Roman Empire and is equally present in today's United States, where Russian and other kleptocrats who like to hide their luxury assets in Western jurisdictions are seen as particularly threatening to both the "integrity of the financial markets" and the democratic liberal order itself. It is worth noting that in a globalised world with a financial system characterised by the borderless mobility of capital, Western actors insist on localising corruption to specific countries. Transparency International's much-quoted "Corruption Perception Index", which ranks countries according to how corrupt they allegedly are, is in itself a good example of this. A classification according to (Western hegemonic criteria for) corruption is a discursive power grab that builds up the image that it is always the Other who is corrupt - the backward, uneducated and uncivilised. From this perspective, corruption in the Third World and former communist states is usually perceived as something that comes from within - it is something cultural and endemic that has nothing to do with structural causes. But if, for example, corruption appears in the West, the cause is usually localised in a sender country or in a few individual "bad apples", employees who become "internal threats[49]

With its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and subsequent brutal warfare, including attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure as well as other war crimes, Russia in many ways reclaimed the Soviet Union's place as the West's enemy and defining Other. Nobody (with the possible exception of cynical elements within the military-industrial complex)[50] wanted the hell that the Ukrainian population is being subjected to and the major global economic problems that the war is creating or exacerbating, either directly or indirectly, but perversely, Russia's senseless brutality is a gift to the anti-corruption discourse. With such an unconstitutional and downright cruel war, corruption has definitively taken communism's former place as the greatest systemic threat to liberal democracy, since corruption in this perspective is inextricably linked to autocracy. For example, in an op-ed in Foreign Policy, former French Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau and US Congressman Peter Meijer argue that "Russian corruption is an acute security threat" and propose a series of measures to "defend the democratic world against the Kremlin and other authoritarian regimes that rely on using corruption as a weapon in their foreign policy[51]

Moralistic technocracy takes over: the triumph of anti-politics

This moral condemnation and securitisation of corruption requires special attention. The Putin regime's securitisation of the spiritual-moral values on which the social order is supposedly built,[52] is often met with ridicule. But the West has also securitised "its" moral values. Since the 1990s, anti-corruption discourse, initially an economic discourse instrumentalised to spread neoliberal economic policies and "good governance" in developing countries,[53] has become increasingly moralised and characterised by post-political discussions around "global ethics" and integrity.[54] These have then been woven in the form of ethical guidelines into supposedly apolitical techno-bureaucratic regulation as well as monitoring systems.[55] In parallel, we have seen an explosion of corruption scandals and revelations where the luxury and rhetoric of corruption as "cancer", "virus" or "evil"[56] is used as a political and often populist tool on both the right and the left to mobilise against those who are singled out as corrupt and who must be eliminated so that the body politic can miraculously regain its health and moral integrity. [57] These corruption scandals would not be scandals without revelations of lavish luxury, luxury that both stems from and motivates crimes (usually against community resources).

The anti-corruption project is built on a negative principle. It is an anti-politics[58] in two senses, as the Norwegian term encompasses two English terms; both anti-policy and anti-politics. The first is about being against something everyone is against - because everyone can agree to be against corruption. What one is in favour of in practice, however, varies greatly. Despite its extremely negative connotations, corruption is such a vague term that many analyses and reports simply give up on defining it and either implicitly or explicitly use the "elephant test", also known as the "pornography test" (it's hard to define, but you know it when you see it).[59] Thus, it can be applied to almost anything and everything - corruption becomes a fluid signifier. In Albania, which in the 2000s was one of the world's most corrupt countries according to Transparency International, but which at the same time was praised for its "outstanding" anti-corruption measures, both the left and the right have used anti-corruption as an argument, only with diametrically opposite signs, both in terms of causes and countermeasures. [60]

At an advanced stage of this "disease", we stop asking what we are really for when we embrace anti-corruption.[61] And that's where we are now. "Corruption" has today become an empty signifier, and we have entered the anti-political phase in the second and even more disturbing sense of the word, which implies a hostility, or - perhaps worse - complete indifference to politics as such, even if the supposedly technical, apolitical and moral improvement measures have fundamental political consequences. It hasn't always been this way: In the early 1970s, the G77 group of developing countries sought to limit the interference of multinational corporations in their domestic politics, which heads of state defined as corruption. The campaign was spearheaded by Chilean President Salvador Allende, to whom the US telecoms company ITT had offered the CIA a six-figure sum to prevent him from standing for election.[62] The G77 did not prevail - the victorious understanding of corruption internationally became fundamentally neoliberal, i.e. it is the politicians' "interference" in the activities of international companies that must be regarded as corruption, not the other way round. Allende's demise and Chile's subsequent history are well known: the elected president was overthrown and died during General Pinochet's CIA-backed coup,[63] after which the dictator, to American applause, introduced neoliberal "reforms" that secured the "rights" of multinational companies. Globally, large corporations are now seen as allies in the fight against corruption, which, according to the hegemonic view, originates in the public sector, not in business.

Over the past 30 years, the anti-corruption discourse itself has developed in an increasingly moralising direction. Apparently paradoxically, this goes hand in hand with technocratisation, which is a form of depoliticisation whose advanced form is the anti-political phase. Until the 1990s, corruption was sometimes perceived as a necessary evil, or perhaps not an evil at all, a culturally specific phenomenon that had to be studied in its local context. Transparency International (founded 1993) and its Corruption Perception Index, which despite its dubious methodology (interviews of Western business people and subsequent quantification) is now considered the gold standard for assessing the prevalence of corruption worldwide, completely decontextualised corruption by setting a score for each country. This highly questionable quantification laid the foundation for numerous (pun intended) econometric analyses that in turn paved the way for depoliticised, technical solutions to improve the ranking. [64]With the fall of communism and the subsequent proclamation of the "end of history[65], the left was delegitimised to such an extent that it can be argued that it is not history that ended, but politics. The void left by politics has quickly been filled by moralising. After all, who could be against technical, "scientifically based" improvements? It is important not to make a mistake here: political conflicts of interest (even beyond superficial identity politics) have not disappeared, and supposedly apolitical and technical measures still have major political consequences, but it has become almost impossible to argue politically against the standardised neoliberal-technical "optimisation project". For example, protests that originated in dissatisfaction with relative poverty and social inequality - i.e. the consequences of neoliberal and oligopolistic capitalism - now usually take the form of anti-corruption protests.[66]

Condemnation of luxury - especially of "luxury in the wrong hands[67]is therefore actively used in various political campaigns. Probably the most straightforward case of this rhetoric can be found in the now imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who has become world famous for his detailed revelations of the luxurious life of Putin's circle and the Russian elite in general, and uses these as effective tools in his political campaign.[68] Navalny's trademark is precisely the combination of meticulous documentation and striking visual presentation. In his YouTube universe, lavish, vulgar luxury corruption. But in harmony with his liberal convictions, Navalny is not opposed to luxury as such, as long as it is acquired in line with market economy principles and preferably as a result of technological innovation - the gold standard is held by Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Pavel Durov, among others. Exposure of luxury consumption must therefore undergo a reverse cleansing process, an incitement, and be supported by evidence and indications of corruption, usually in the form of documentation of legally dubious transfers and ownership, as well as other information that is often available in open sources. Facsimiles of original documents are cross-cut with photos and videos of luxury wardrobes, watches, jewellery and cars, not to mention superyachts and extravagant palaces. Despite its light-hearted and entertaining form, Navalny follows a fundamentally moralistic narrative. Although he is a trained lawyer and often makes use of legal arguments and the possibilities offered by the legal system (regardless of the fact that the regime is using the same legal system to destroy him), it is the moral and not the legal side that is emphasised in the exposure videos. In this perspective, luxuries acquired outside or on the side of a utopian-ideal market economic system are illegitimate, immoral and dirty, and are condemned. In Navalny's rhetoric, the Russian elite's chanting about protecting "traditional values"[69] is used as an example of double standards. It is the "rotten at the top", the kleptocrats, the individuals living in obscene and unearned luxury who are blamed for everything that is wrong in Russia. On the other hand, the tax havens, law firms and Western markets that for three decades have willingly opened their arms to Russian capital, and without which such astronomical corruption would be impossible, appear naively innocent.

Impurities and loopholes

During the Cold War, the communist Soviet Union represented the negation of the West and functioned as the West's anti-capitalist Other. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, corruption has over time established itself as a central ideological concept that similarly enables boundaries to be drawn between the West and the Other. The Other (from Russia as the paradigmatic Other to developing countries in the Third World) is often seen as systemically corrupt. To the extent that the West has its own problems, it is in the form of legal loopholes or corrupt individuals in an otherwise "clean" and well-functioning governance machine. In practice, it is the Western liberal governance model that is considered "non-corrupt" and serves as the ideal. It is often said that what attracts corrupt kleptocrats to the West is the "clean" system's rule of law guarantees combined with loopholes. This loophole rhetoric does not seem to be threatened by the fact that many such loopholes have grown very large - entire cities and jurisdictions are built on being loopholes, from London(grad)[70] to "Little Moscow" in Florida[71] , not to mention all the tax havens, including Joe Biden's home state of Delaware, known as the "Delaware loophole".[72] There is no doubt that oligarchs, kleptocrats and many others are attracted by being able to utilise the "clean" (but Swiss cheese-like) system to stow away their fortunes in luxury assets in the West and at the same time launder both their money and reputations. That's why people often talk about the need to close these regulatory and legal "loopholes", because it's these loopholes that are claimed to undermine democracy.

Proposals to close loopholes go hand in hand with proposals to increase "transparency" or "openness" (in practice, reporting and disclosure requirements). Returning to the Biden-Harris anti-corruption strategy, we can read in the press release that:

The Biden-Harris administration is committed to treating corruption as a priority for economic and national security, and has pledged to lead international efforts to bring transparency to the global financial system and close loopholes that undermine democracy.[73]

In other words, you need more (sun)light, in line with the oft-quoted mantra of Judge Louis Brandeis from 1914: "Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant; electric light is the most efficient policeman".[74] From Transparency International via the UN Convention against Corruption to national laws and private self-regulation, the principles of transparency and "closing the loopholes" are guiding and the very essence of "good governance". (At the same time, it must be said that one does not want close these loopholes completely for one's own and "clean" with "legitimate needs", the loopholes should be closed first and foremost for those who are singled out as the corrupt and unclean Others, such as the sanctioned oligarchs). Mary Douglas' classic study Purity and Danger (the Norwegian title Rent og urent is not entirely appropriate) can illuminate (pun intended) this dynamic.[75] Purity and impurity are categories that are central to governance discourses, administration, (self-)regulation and legislation[76] , along with concepts such as "transparency" and "integrity". Implicit in these related concepts is a notion of elimination of the impure and polluting, which can be said to be primary and guiding for the entire logic of governance. What is at stake is nothing less than social order; luxury assets in the wrong (i.e. corrupt, i.e. impure) hands that find their way into Western markets are precisely an example of "matter out of place" that must be eliminated, otherwise our system risks being polluted by the corruption of others, which in turn leads to decay

The frenetic purity regulation of the compliance complex

This kind of decline can be compared to falling away from an ideal state or degeneration after a (mythological) golden age, as we know it from Greco-Roman antiquity or Norse mythology, for example.[77] In this context, an explosion in luxury consumption is a sure sign that civilisation has degenerated and that doom is approaching. Corruption that sprang from the elite's devotion to the life of luxury has been blamed for the fall of several empires. The history of ideas is rich in examples of such notions, but we can highlight Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a forerunner of modern sociology. Ibn Khaldun linked luxury and decadence to societal collapse in his influential cyclical theory of the rise and fall of empires and sovereign powers, which he applied to understand how the Islamic societies of North Africa and Spain disintegrated: "The greater the luxury they enjoy and the easier the life they lead, the closer they are to extinction".[78] The urban society characterised by lavish luxury, gaping inequality, corruption, injustice, forced labour and crime is the last stage of civilisation,[79] which is also the "last stage of evil"[80] , where civilisation begins to "rot": "people are now devoted to lying, gambling, cheating, fraud, theft, perjury and usury.[81]

It is therefore no surprise that lavish luxury consumption is met with moral condemnation and frantically sought to be regulated. Whereas the cyclical understanding of history in earlier times could provide comfort that a new heyday would come, modernity's linear view of history makes the threat of decay more frightening. What is new about today's sprawling regulatory paradigm, in which sanctions and compliance are important elements, is that this is "only" a new superstructure on the neoliberal and mythologically meritocratic foundation that has held hegemony for the past three decades. The first neoliberals emphasised what they claimed were the moral virtues of capitalism. Simply put, the market was moral, while the state was immoral. Trade was ennobling, politics corrupting.[82] If everyone pursued prosperity (within the market and in a legal manner), everyone would be better off. In this sense, the pursuit of luxury becomes almost a moral imperative - for everyone, by definition. But with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, globalisation, the financialisation of the economy and, not least, the deregulation of formerly state-run national economies as well as global markets after the fall of communism - in short, the triumph of neoliberal capitalism - this naive notion of the moral value of luxury has been challenged by environmental problems, continued exploitation, crime and enormous social inequality - within the global north as well as between north and south.

 Thanks to the vaccine of depoliticisation, the fundamental principles of our world order are immune to criticism. Luxury as such cannot be raised as a problem. This creates a discursive need to distinguish between criminal, corrupt, immoral and dirty luxury on the one hand, and legitimate, moral and "clean" luxury on the other. The negative aspects of luxury and our unhealthy relationship with consumption are projected onto the Other. Luxury consumption in the West is largely considered unproblematic at system level. This is also why visions of "ethical luxury" and "sustainable" luxury consumption can be cultivated.[83] When our consumption culture is criticised, it is surprisingly often the middle and working classes that are blamed, for example for throwing away too much food, using too much electricity or driving fossil-fuelled cars.[84] When luxury consumption is attacked, the focus is primarily on the Other - for example, migrants or kleptocrats on holiday or jurisdictional shopping - or the "internal Other", i.e. criminal individuals or networks whose pursuit of luxury consumption and status leads them to commit crimes. Luxury and corruption, especially when they occur simultaneously, fundamentally challenge central notions of sovereignty and the liberal order. This is precisely why they need to be kept under control: either by pursuing "illegitimate" luxury, or by cultivating narratives of "ethical", "sustainable" and "good" luxury in line with notions of "ethical" capitalism.[85] It's no coincidence that the luxury market is closely linked to philanthropy - there is even talk of "philanthropic luxury"[86] .

All of this is dependent on the elimination of "impure" luxuries. If we look back to sanctions regimes, we perhaps see most clearly how this plays out. But what does this mean in practice? It's worth noting that although it's the Others who are on the sanctions lists, it's the citizens, companies and organisations in the Western jurisdictions that issue sanctions that are obliged to comply with them. This also means that it is they - i.e. we - who are penalised if we trade with or facilitate the sanctioned. Both are defined as violations of the sanctions. Companies, organisations and individuals are required to carry out "due diligence", customer checks, etc. to ensure that they comply with the sanctions rules. The compliance industry's[87] machinery is set in motion, with thousands of miniature intelligence officers scrutinising clients, customers and others against sanctions lists and digging into obscure corporate structures, often in vain, as they are often registered in various tax havens. They try to close their internal systems and shut down services to sanctioned, corrupt and corrupting elements.

The industry is worth billions of dollars - it has become a veritable leviathan that feeds on and grows in line with ever new regulations, from anti-money laundering and anti-corruption to sanctions rules. The compliance industry is either assigned or appropriates the task of cleansing the system of "corrupt elements" and "suspicious" individuals, or at least "managing the risk" of interacting with them. This is done through techno-bureaucratic systems, data-driven programmes, artificial intelligence and investigative and intelligence expertise, whose sole job is to apply impenetrable criteria to categorise the world and divide people into rigid "low risk", "medium risk" and "high risk" categories. This is a form of purification through categorisation and is leading to the emergence of a global techno-bureaucratic and algorithmic[88] governance architecture that claims neutrality and universality by virtue of being based on data-driven expert knowledge, condensed into concepts such as "best practice" or "universal standard". It is precisely this moralising perception of corruption that is now being securitised in a global power struggle over values, morals, economics and forms of governance.

The challenge of criminal luxury

In the liberal, technocratic order, luxury as such is basically reduced to a commodity among others on the market. Even though luxury goods are more expensive and rarer than others, within our social order there is nothing qualitatively different about luxury goods compared to other goods. Anyone who can afford it can, in principle, buy luxury. Nonetheless, there are several aspects of luxury, especially criminal luxury, that challenge our notions of social order. Luxury carries with it a residual aura of aristocratic sovereignty. It's not just about showing that you've been good at making money, but also about a demonstrative form of self-elevation above the common people. It's no coincidence that many of the Russian political elite live in palaces that are not only enormous, but also characterised by their "royal" architecture, which stands in stark contrast to the way most of the Western super-rich build and furnish their homes. Of course, this is partly a matter of the personal tastes of a particular (post)Soviet generation and particular individuals, and can rightly be criticised as a manifestation of an inflated self-image, which is an important element in, for example, Navalny's videos. In India, we find a similar cultivation of neo-aristocratic luxury among the (ultra)rich who like to stylise themselves as the new maharajas.[89] But this also tells us something more fundamental: over the centuries, luxury has been used to emphasise sovereignty,[90] which in turn is inextricably linked to transgression in general

Sovereignty implies freedom of action and freedom from domination. In the traditional understanding (until the 1990s) of state sovereignty in international relations, the principle of non-interference in internal affairs was crucial. After the fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, this understanding came under attack, partly as a result of the United States remaining the sole superpower, and not least because such a principle of non-interference turned out to give dictators the freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities against their own subjects. This triggered a complex process that resulted in a significant weakening of state sovereignty.[91] Heads of state could be prosecuted and sovereignty was made dependent on their behaviour at home, i.e. whether the state protected the population's human rights and even met the criteria for "good governance".[92] If not, the international community had a "duty to protect", which was enshrined in the UN in 2005.[93] In parallel and since then, the conditions have spread and invaded area after area, far beyond preventing serious abuses. A state can, in theory, refuse to fulfil the plethora of conditions, which now also include detailed regulations on economic policy and compliance with various extremely specific standards, but will then have to wave goodbye to much-needed loans and investments. [94]Compliance regimes in general and sanctions and regulation of luxury consumption in particular can be seen as an extension of this governance logic. Now, most people would agree that it is perfectly acceptable for a head of state not to be allowed to commit genocide with impunity, even if it happens within the state's borders. At the same time, it is easy to understand that conditions, standards, rules and complex ethical guidelines and routines for all activities are perceived as colonialist, double standards, patronising, suffocating and infantilising, both for states and individuals.

Derrida has observed how sovereignty as such has been discredited, as it is directly associated with the abuse of power and rogue states.[95] Russia, a proponent of a traditional, even reactionary understanding of sovereignty, has in the past, albeit selectively, in its approach to Third World countries (the traditional victims of Western-defined "conditional sovereignty") cultivated its own role as the transgressor, even the rogue state, unconcerned with the supposedly oppressive norms of "good governance".[96] Putin, who like many within the Russian regime is obsessed with sovereignty[97] and terrified of foreign interference, has himself used criminal jargon in public precisely to emphasise sovereignty.[98] It is no coincidence that in his speech at the annexation of four Ukrainian regions on 30 September 2022, he spent a lot of time criticising Western colonialism and thus freedom to countries in the Third World.[99] With the war in Ukraine, it can be argued that Russia has fully and unreservedly entered the ranks of the rogue states.[100] Whereas previously, thuggery was plausibly deniable because it was geographically limited and outsourced to private actors such as the notorious Yevgeny Prigozin, who kept a relatively low profile before the war, it is now far more visible. The stereotypically criminal businessman, with nine years of prison time for violence and robbery and a physiognomy that would make Lombroso nod approvingly[101] even advertises his thuggery, for example in videos where he personally tries to recruit convicts for his private army. [102]

Sovereignty under certain conditions, not to mention conditions related to utility and rationality - as the hegemonic understanding can be described - is a contradiction in terms. Once sovereignty is limited, there is no longer any question of sovereignty in the true sense. George Bataille sees sovereignty as "an aspect opposed to the servile and docile".[103] For him, sovereignty is about transcending the common sense calculations of suffering today in order to get a reward tomorrow, transcending the household economy's obsession with what is necessary and unnecessary or useful and useless.[104] Sovereignty is experienced precisely through unproductive consumption that would otherwise be seen as pointlessly wasteful, useless and often dangerous: this includes everything from "luxury, mourning ceremonies, war[105] , the practice of religion, the construction of lavish monuments, toys and games, theatre, art and perverse (non-genital) forms of sexuality."[106] This is where criminal or corrupt luxury comes in as a strong marker of sovereignty whose power aesthetic has its own appeal.[107] On the one hand, it can be said that this search for and manifestation of sovereignty and criminal, corrupt luxury is diametrically opposed to the technocratic-moralist regulatory paradigm - it is precisely this that is sought to be combated, since it is perceived as a threat to the foundations of society. But in a broader perspective, it's not that simple. A transgression presupposes that there is something to transgress, and the ultimate transgression is to set aside the legal and normative order as such. Carl Schmitt's classic definition of the sovereign as "the one who decides on [the introduction of] a state of emergency"[108] emphasises this. Although the imposition of a state of emergency is linked to an extreme threat, an enormous power of definition lies with the sovereign, who is simultaneously inside and outside the law.[109] The transgressions reaffirm the norm by breaking it, while following their own rules.[110] Bataille himself was preoccupied with moments of sovereignty, which can be said to help maintain order by transgressing its norms.[111] In this respect, the cartoonishly corrupt and luxury-obsessed oligarch functions as a pillar of our ideal social order, by virtue of being its negation.

Conclusion

Putin's decision to invade Russia's Slavic brotherland is often seen as a catastrophic misjudgement. He completely overestimated Russia's lack of popularity among the Ukrainian population, he underestimated Ukrainian military strength and overestimated Russian military strength, but perhaps most importantly, he underestimated Western unity. Putin had his reasons for this, including weak Western reactions on numerous previous occasions, not least the annexation of Crimea. Independently of Russia, there have also been signs of division, disagreement and conflicting interests within the West, not least between the US and Europe, but also between European countries. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the barbarity of the war have changed this. Western unity and willingness to pay the "price of war" have so far proved formidable. But what is "it" in this context? What are we actually supporting Ukraine in the fight against? The short and superficial answer is that Ukraine is fighting for our values. For example, the President of the European Parliament justified the award of the 2022 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Expression to the Ukrainian people by saying that "[...] they are fighting to defend the values we all believe in: freedom, democracy, the rule of law".[112] The Ukrainians remind us of who we would like to be - they act as our ego ideal (Ich-Ideal) - our untainted, former self, just as the fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe galvanised democracy three decades earlier.[113] In this sense, the war in Ukraine touches on something much more fundamental than "mere" geopolitical influence. It has become something of an existential issue for our social order. This is probably part of the explanation for why Western unity has become so strong

But where liberal democracy has proved dependent on a positive "pole", regulatory oligopolistic capitalism is driven by the image of the criminal and impure Other. Anti-luxury sanctions and anti-corruption regulation are admittedly aimed at the ultimate criminals - the corrupt who have robbed their own country, invaded the neighbouring country and also threaten to undermine the foundations of our social form. At the same time, sanctions and regulation - the luxury legislation of our time - tell us more about ourselves than about the Other. True to its nature, capitalism, faced with environmental problems, social unrest, disintegration and enormous inequality, i.e. fundamental challenges to its own principles, has reacted by generating its own market - to solve the problems that market logic itself has created. This market, in turn, contributes to its own perpetuation in a thanatos-like logic that is itself one of the fundamental driving forces of capitalism:[114] there are constantly new regulations, constantly new ethical guidelines, constantly new loopholes that need to be closed. This is a seemingly eternal, closed cycle that, in harmony with its inner logic, constantly produces more of what does not work. As soon as one loophole is closed, another loophole is "discovered", but never systemic flaws. As long as there are corrupt rich people in search of luxury - and there will be, as long as the international order and the international financial system are not fundamentally changed - there will always be new "loopholes" and consequently always new potential regulations, giving the compliance industry new opportunities to make money. Put bluntly, it is therefore the corrupt oligarch's gaudy gigayacht that keeps the technocratic-moralist paradigm afloat.

_____

This article was written with support from the Research Council of Norway under FRIPRO Young Talents, project LUXCORE: Luxury, Corruption and Global Ethics: Towards a Critical Cultural Theory of the Moral Economy of Fraud, number 313004

Work Research Institute (AFI), OsloMet - Metropolitan University (tereza.kuldova@oslomet.no)
Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, The Norwegian Defence University College (jaostbo@mil.no)

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/02/remarks-by-president-biden-in-state-of-the-union-address/

[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/russian-elites-proxies-and-oligarchs-task-force-ministerial-joint-statement

[3] The speech can be read here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/04/28/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-request-to-congress-for-additional-funding-to-support-ukraine/

[4] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/business_economy_euro/banking_and_finance/documents/faqs-sanctions-russia-luxury-goods_en.pdf

[5] § 17f. Prohibition of exports of luxury goods as listed in Annex XVIII of the Regulations on Restrictive Measures Concerning Actions Undermining or Threatening the Territorial Integrity, Sovereignty, Independence and Stability of Ukraine

[6] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0839

[7] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/03/fact-sheet-the-united-states-continues-to-target-russian-oligarchs-enabling-putins-war-of-choice/

[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/04/04/spanish-police-and-fbi-seize-viktor-vekselbergs-superyacht-tango-in-mallorca/

[9] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/300-million-yacht-sanctioned-russian-oligarch-suleiman-kerimov-seized-fiji-request-united

[10] https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/04/08/transcript-targeting-oligarchs-with-andrew-adams/

[11] https://www.thedailybeast.com/seized-russian-yachts-may-soon-be-on-the-auction-block

[12] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/03/03/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-march-3rd-2022/

[13] See and https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/05/05/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-may-5-2022/ and

[14] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/usmanow-sanktionen-dilbar-kunstschaetze-1.5688762?reduced=true

[15] http://www.yachtartmanagement.com/img/pandora.pdf

[16] https://www.artworkarchive.com/blog/floating-art-collections-ultimate-luxury-on-superyachts

[17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdfKOt6JPA

[18] Emma Spence, "Performing wealth and status: Observing super-yachts and the super-rich in Monaco," in Handbook on wealth and the super-rich, ed. Iain Hay and Jonathan V. Beaverstock (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016).

[19] Bruno Cousin and Sébastien Chauvin, "Islanders, immigrants and millionaires: The dynamics of upper-class segregation in St Barts, French West Indies," in Geographies of the super-rich, ed. Iain Hay (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013).

[20] Veblen, Thorstein. 2007. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[21] Basmann, Robert L., David J. Molina, and Daniel J. Slottje. 1988. "A Note on Measuring Veblen's Theory of Conspicuous Consumption."  The Review of Economics Statistics 70 (3):531-5.

[22] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/09/superyachts-and-bragging-rights-why-the-super-rich-love-their-floating-homes.

[23] https://www.ft.com/content/5263810a-c4d3-4380-a38e-3a78df99a788

[24] Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

[25] See for example this cost calculator: https:

[26] https://www.ft.com/content/5263810a-c4d3-4380-a38e-3a78df99a788

[27] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/russian-sanctions-shaking-superyacht-industry/index.html

[28] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3195349/russian-superyacht-hong-kong-beijing-and-washington-cross#comments

[29] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/grassley-statement-at-hearing-on-kleptocapture-and-russian-oligarch-forfeiture

[30] Tereza Østbø Kuldova, "Luxury and Corruption," in The Oxford Handbook of Luxury Business, ed. Pierre-Yves Donzé, Veronique Pouillard, and Joanne Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

[31] Jeng-Guo S. Chen, "Gendering India: Effeminacy and the Scottish Enlightenment's Debates over Virtue and Luxury," The Eighteenth Century 51, no. 1/2 (2010).

[32] Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 62.

[33] Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation; Emanuela Zanda, Fighting Hydra-like Luxury: Sumptuary Regulation in the Roman Republic (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

[34] Gerd Mordt, "Gjestebud og silkeklær - og myndighetenees forsøk på å kontrollere bøndenes forbrug på 1700-tallet," Arkivverket (2018), https://www.arkivverket.no/utforsk-arkivene/kulturarvaret-2018/gjestebud-silkeklaer-og-forbrukskontroll.

[35] Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996).

[36] William Howard Adams, On Luxury: A Cautionary Tale (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012).

[37] Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation.

[38] Christopher Berry, "Democratic luxury: An oxymoron?" Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal 1, no. 1 (2022).

[39] Jeremy Jennings, "The Debate about Luxury in Eighteenth- and Nineteeth-Century French Political Thought," Journal of the History of Ideas 68, no. 1 (2007); Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

[40] Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 8, 17.

[41] Tereza Kuldova, "Luxury Brands in the Wrong Hands: Of Harleys, Harm, and Sovereignty," in Crime, Harm and Consumerism, ed. Steve Hall, Tereza Kuldova, and Mark Horsley (London: Routledge, 2020).

[42] Kovesi Killerby, Catherine. 1994. "Practical Problems in the Enforcement of Italian Sumptuary Law, 1200-1500." In Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, 99-120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[43] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/06/fact-sheet-u-s-strategy-on-countering-corruption/

[44] Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998).

[45] Tereza Østbø Kuldova, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society (Palgrave Pivot, 2022).

[46] "Interim National Security Strategic Guidance," 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf

[47] "Interim National Security Strategic Guidance."

[48] Ruth A. Miller, The Erotics of Corruption: Law, Scandal, and Political Perversion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008).

[49] Janine R Wedel, Unaccountable: How elite power brokers corrupt our finances, freedom, and security [ebook] (New York: Pegasus Books, 2014). Kuldova, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society.

[50] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-military-industrial-complexs-big-break-in-ukraine/.

[51] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/05/russia-corruption-security-threat/

[52] Jardar Østbø, "Securitising "spiritual-moral values" in Russia," Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 3 (2017).

[53] Elitza Katzarova, The Social Construction of Global Corruption: From Utopia to Neoliberalism (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

[54] Christina Garsten and Kerstin Jacobsson, "Transparency and legibility in international institutions: the UN Global Compact and post-political global ethics," Social Anthropology 19, no. 4 (2011).

[55] Kuldova, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society.

[56] Laura S. Underkuffler, Captured by Evil: The Idea of Corruption in Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

[57] Blendi Kajsiu, "Public or private corruption? The ideological dimension of anti-corruption discourses in Colombia, Ecuador and Albania," Journal of Extreme Anthropology 5, no. 2 (2021), https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.9243, https://journals.uio.no/JEA/article/view/9243/7879.

[58] William Walters, "Anti-policy and anti-politics: Critical reflections on certain schemes to govern bad things," European Journal of Cultural Studies 11, no. 3 (2008).

[59] For an example, see this report from the World Bank: Shang-Jin Wei, "Corruption in economic development: Beneficial grease, minor annoyance, or major obstacle?" World Bank Policy Working Paper, no. 2048 (1999): 9, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/175291468765621959/129529322_20041117144615/additional/multi-page.pdf.

[60] Blendi Kajsiu, A discourse analysis of corruption: Instituting neoliberalism against corruption in Albania, 1998-2005 (Routledge, 2016).

[61] The consequences of governance through this type of anti-policy are discussed in detail in the following book; here we limit ourselves to mentioning only these key dynamics: Kuldova, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society.

[62] Katzarova, The Social Construction of Global Corruption: From Utopia to Neoliberalism, 80, 107; "Allende and Chile: 'Bring Him Down'," National Security Archive, 2020, accessed 21 September 2022, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-11-06/allende-inauguration-50th-anniversary.

[63] "Allende and Chile: 'Bring Him Down'."

[64] Ivan Krastev, Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004).

[65] Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man (Simon and Schuster, [1992] 2006).

[66] Krastev, Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption.

[67] Kuldova, "Luxury Brands in the Wrong Hands: Of Harleys, Harm, and Sovereignty."

[68] Jan Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet, and Ben Noble, Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future (London: Hurst, 2021).

[69] Østbø, "Securitising "spiritual-moral values" in Russia."

[70] Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley, Londongrad: From Russia with Cash, The Inside Story of Oligarchs (London: Fourth Estate Ltd., 2010).

[71] https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-little-moscow-sunny-isles-miami-russian-money-real-estate-2022-3?r=US&IR=T

[72] https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2022/06/delaware-is-everywhere-how-a-little-known-tax-haven-made-the-rules-for-corporate-america/#:~:text=What%20makes%20Delaware%20a%20tax,where%20they%20earn%20the%20revenue.

[73] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/03/fact-sheet-establishing-the-fight-against-corruption-as-a-core-u-s-national-security-interest/

[74] https://louisville.edu/law/library/special-collections/the-louis-d.-brandeis-collection/other-peoples-money-chapter-v

[75] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2001).

[76] Patricia M. Patterson, "Introduction - Purity and Danger," Administrative Theory & Praxis 33, no. 1 (2011).

[77] Paulus Svendsen, Gullalderdrøm og utviklingstro (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1979).

[78] "The greater their luxury and the easier the life they enjoy, the closer they are to extinction" Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History (Vol. I) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 287.

[79] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History (Vol. II) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 291.

[80] "the last stage of evil and remoteness from goodness" Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History (Vol. I), 255.

[81] "people are now devoted to lying, gambling, cheating, fraud, theft, perjury and usury" Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History (Vol. II), 293.

[82] Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (London: Verso, 2019).

[83] See, for example, Petter Stordalen's statements on "sustainable capitalism" in a conversation with the President of the Church of Norway at Trefoldighetskirken in Oslo: https://www.vl.no/nyheter/2019/05/07/petter-stordalen-droftet-verdier-med-helga-byfuglien/.

[84] See for example https://www.framtiden.no/tema/forbruk.html

[85] Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009).

[86] https://www.forbes.com/sites/njgoldston/2018/02/28/how-to-attract-luxury-brands-to-support-your-cause-advice-from-the-experts-on-the-new-conundrum/?sh=12b463056035 or https://arolabor

[87] English: compliance industry. See Kuldova, Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society.

[88] M. Campbell-Verduyn, M. Goguen, and T. Porter, "Big Data and algorithmic governance: the case of financial practices," New Political Economy 22, no. 2 (2017); Ignas Kalpokas, Algorithmic Governance: Politics and Law in the Post-Human Era (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Christian Katzenbach and Lena Ulbricht, "Algorithmic Governance," Internet Policy Review 8, no. 4 (2019).

[89] Tereza Kuldova, "'The Maharaja Style': Royal Chic, Heritage Luxury and the Nomadic Elites," in Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism, ed. Tereza Kuldova (Oslo: Akademika Publishing, 2013); Tereza Kuldova, Luxury Indian Fashion: A Social Critique (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).

[90] Renate Pieper, "Trading with Art and Curiosities in Southern Germany before the Thirty Years War," in Markets for Arts, 1400-1800, ed. Clara Eugenia Nunez (1998).

[91] G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

[92] Anne L. Clunan, "Russia's Pursuit of Great-Power Status and Security," in Routledge Handbook of Russian Security, ed. Roger E. Kanet (London: Routledge, 2019).

[93] UN, "Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 16 September 2005," (2005). https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_60_1.pdf.

[94] Sarah L Babb and Bruce G Carruthers, "Conditionality: Forms, Function, and History," Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4 (2008); Stephen D Krasner, "Pervasive Not Perverse: Semi-Sovereigns as the Global Norm," Cornell International Law Journal 30, no. 3 (1997); Stephen D Krasner, "Sovereignty," in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (Online: Blackwell, 2007).

[95] Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005).

[96] Jardar Østbø, "Strategic Transgressions: Russia's Deviant Sovereignty and the Myth of Evgenii Prigozhin," Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratisation 29, no. 2 (2021).

[97] Andrey Makarychev and Sergey Medvedev, "Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin's Russia," Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 26, no. 2-3 (2018/09/02 2018), https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2018.1526487, https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2018.1526487; Eliot Borenstein, Plots against Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).

[98] Jardar Østbø, "The Sources of Russia's Transgressive Conservatism: Cultural Sovereignty and the Monopolisation of Bespredel," in The Cultural is Political: Intersections of Russian Art and State Politics, ed. Ingunn Lunde and Irina Anisimova (Bergen: Slavica Bergensia, 2020).

[99] http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69465

[100] UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for example, has done so, see: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/bali-russia-sergei-lavrov-prime-minister-g20-b2224377.html.

[101] https://civic-stance.blogspot.com/2019/03/blog-post.html

[102] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOtN3PllDrk

[103] George Bataille, "Knowledge of Sovereignty," in The Bataille Reader, ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 301.

[104] Bataille, "Knowledge of Sovereignty," 302.

[105] It is worth mentioning that Bataille also has a lot to say about war, sovereignty and waste that we do not have space to discuss here, for a relevant discussion see for example: Benjamin Meiches, "Wars of excess: Georges Bataille, solar economy, and the accident in the age of precision war," Security Dialogue 51, no. 2-3 (2019).

[106] George Bataille, "The Notion of Excess," in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoeckl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 118. See also: Per Buvik, Georges Bataille (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1998).

[107] Tereza Kuldova, "The Sublime Splendour of Intimidation: On the Outlaw Biker Aesthetics of Power," Visual Anthropology 30, no. 5 (2017), https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2017.1371545.

[108] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985), 5.

[109] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: sovereign power and bare life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

[110] Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

[111] Jared E Lemole, "Carnival, sacred and sovereign: The intellectual intersection of Bakhtin and Bataille [Unpublished MA thesis]" (Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University, 2005).

[112] https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/video/sakharov-prize-for-freedom-of-thought-2022-announcement-of-the-brave-people-of-ukraine-represented-by-their-president-elected-leaders-and-civil-society-as-the-2022-laureate-by-roberta-metsola-ep-president_I231809

[113] Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).

[114] Todd McGowan, Capitalism and Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Todd McGowan, Enjoying what we don't have: The political project of psychoanalysis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013).