This is the pioneering book that investigates reputation laundering at an institutional – state – level. Theorising the nascent phenomenon by situating it within the state crime framework, offering both empirical and theoretical account of reputation laundering at length, this book reveals the ways corruption is facilitated by global institutions and powerful elites.

Drawing upon extensive empirical evidence, participant observations, and interviews, Kleptocratic Reputation Laundering and State Crime inspects state violence, corruption and authoritarian repression, and how competing narratives of change reflect these topics. It offers a critical exploration of the elite enablers of reputation laundering, using the Uzbek state as a primary example. It interrogates their role and motivations in engaging in the coordinated campaigns, and modes of justification in framing their own complicity. Building on Bourdieu, the book cultivates an original conceptual framework – elite technocratic habitus – to elucidate such forms of complicity within influential institutions and elite milieus.

This book is essential reading for those involved in research or activism on crimes of the powerful, state crime, human rights, global financial institutions and complicity in the development sector. It will benefit students of criminology, law, sociology, anthropology, politics and critical media studies, as well as policy communities and civil society organisations.