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How a New Breed of Bounty Hunter Is Helping Countries Get Their Money Back

By Stephen Handelman

Inside the corruption-busting (and profitable) world of professional asset recovery.

Early on the morning of March 22, 2004, one day before the elections that ended the Antigua Labor Party’s 28-year hold on power, several boxloads of government files were hauled out of the offices of then-Prime Minister Lester Bird. It didn’t take long for his successor — Baldwin Spencer — to figure out why. In some of the boxes inadvertently left behind, Spencer’s staff found evidence of a multi-million-dollar kickback scheme dating back nearly 20 years.

There was enough information in the remaining documents, which showed that at least $14 million had been skimmed from repayments...

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