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What do Eliot Spitzer, 9/11, and tax evasion have in common?

FP Editor-in-Chief Moisès Naím explains: At first sight, the scandals that brought down Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, and Klaus Zumwinkel, the former president of Deutsche Post (the German corporate behemoth), didn’t seem to have much in common. Spitzer fell two weeks ago for hiring prostitutes; Zumwinkel, two weeks before that, for ...

By , a former managing editor of Foreign Policy.

FP Editor-in-Chief Moisès Naím explains:

FP Editor-in-Chief Moisès Naím explains:

At first sight, the scandals that brought down Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, and Klaus Zumwinkel, the former president of Deutsche Post (the German corporate behemoth), didn’t seem to have much in common. Spitzer fell two weeks ago for hiring prostitutes; Zumwinkel, two weeks before that, for tax evasion. Yet there’s a thread that binds them together: money laundering. Both men were brought down by a new system for tracking money that was created in reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—but that has since spread its net far beyond jihadists.

See also Naím’s commentary on how Ugly Betty explains the Latin American economy.

Blake Hounshell is a former managing editor of Foreign Policy.

Read More On Drugs & Crime | Economics | South America | Terrorism

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