The Grant Williams Podcast: Raymond Baker

Author Raymond Baker joins me to discuss his new book, Invisible Trillions: How Financial Secrecy Is Imperiling Capitalism and Democracy and the Way to Renew Our Broken System. Raymond is an American businessman, scholar, author, and authority on financial crime. He is the founder and president of Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC working to curtail illicit financial flows. After graduating Harvard Business School in 1960, Raymond's career began in Nigeria where he was afforded a close-up look at how corruption can affect and impede both business and progress. After relocating back to the United States in the mid-1970s, Raymond continued doing business in Africa and Central and South America, gaining first-hand experience of how illicit capital flows were impacting the development of capitalism across the globe. In 2005, Raymond's first book, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System explored illicit capital flows, including a full exploration of their context and root causes and their financial impact on the world economy and his latest work updates the story in shocking fashion.