I’ve just finished reading ‘King Leopolds Ghost’ by Adam Hotschild about the Belgian colonisation of the Congo, which was pretty much in the hands of the king himself. When he died he had the equivalent of over $1 billion in personal accounts. This reminded me of other dictators/leaders who have secreted away obsence amounts of money. I recall reading that Yasser Arafat allegedly had billions in private accounts when he died, and there are many such cases in third-world countries.
My question is what is the mentality behind this, what good does it do them in the end? They have more money than one person could reasonably spend and often they make little or no effort to improve the lives of ‘their people’.
[I notified the mods, as this shoudl be GD, not GQ.]
Honestly, hard to say in most cases. Many dictators want a healthy war chest, just in case. They have no interest in helping people, so what else would they spend it on?
they are in business of staying alive, free and, preferably, in power (these being closely related anyway) and not in improving “lives of their people”. Not to mention that their idea of what constitutes a good life for their people might differ a lot from your own.
A good way of thinking about this sort of huge personal fortunes would be “money of the State or Ruling Party stored in the leader’s account”. If Arafat thought that keeping his movement intact may require major emergency expenditures in the future, was he supposed to create a separate “PA stabilization and emergency response fund” for this? What if he and his buddies were later on kicked out by some other clique inside PA government and hence lose access to official funds? (Note how their rivals from Hamas were in fact able to seize control of half the country). Whereas by keeping the money controlled by himself and his associates he and his gang would have it ready, come what may.
When you have to leave in a hurry, a pile of money helps. One thing I heard on the radio was that Baby Doc went back to Haiti last year(?) because he was going broke.
Plus a lot of these are exaggerations by people with axes to grind. Mubarak allegedly had billions, but it seems he’s not filthy filthy rich, just rich rich. There was a big debate ovr how rich. Yasser Arafat? I suppose you need millions if you have to run a small army, fly all over the world, and maybe skip countries on a moment’s notice.
It’s not like too many world leaders are relying on their next paycheque anyway, whatever the situation. How many of the US presidents really needed that $400,000 /year? Somehow, every career politician seems to be doing good.
One suspicion would be that it has to do with securing your power. If you’re worried about your top general, then if you fire him, there’s the chance that you will be the recipient of a coup d’etat. The same will happen if you do anything public to move against him. But you can go privately to the general’s subordinates and give them all sorts of goodies from your personal stash, to bring them to your side before you move. Ultimately, money is power. If you’re relying on just your legal position or your political position then you’re in a more dangerous place than if you also have a strong financial position.
It’s human nature to fear and loathe the people you wrong. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, so by reviling the people you have harmed or oppressed, you can remain convinced that you nevertheless are a good guy/gal.
Now, if you’re a dictator, you have a lot of people to fear and despise. If you have the sense Og gave a duck, you realize that you do not single-handedly maintain your position. You are dependent on others to help you - a standing army AND a police force AND a praetorian guard are these days probably the minimum most dictators would want. Initially, these may be won over to your side by genuine conviction, but in time cynicism sets in in at least some of these people who are key to maintaining your power. The smart dictator makes sure that he properly incentivizes those who enable his power to continue. That generally means money.
Most of that money will come from public funding, easy enough if you are the person controlling public funds. But the smart and successful dictator knows that he needs several strings to his bow. His enemies, the people whom he has oppressed or harmed, and those who either fancy themselves as harmed or covet his power for themselves, are legion. There’s always the possibility that, while the dictator believes that he controls the public funds, enough of his subjects disagree that in fact it becomes difficult for him to maintain the loyalty of his supporters by public means. He’d bloody well better have private funds available to him. Further, unless he’s a total idiot, he knows that ultimately, he may yet lose power entirely. He needs a final backup plan, and given that he’s lived a highly privileged life as a dictator, he is unlikely to view the idea of poverty in exile with much enthusiasm. So he tries to makes sure that that won’t happen. You do that by socking away funds in other countries. Generally you try to have redundancies, so that if for some reason, say, your Swiss accounts are frozen, you can stiill access the funds you have in the Caymans, or Singapore, or New York.
Leopold was not a Dictator, he was a duly crowned monarch. Secondly, Congo was owned by him and his society, he was a private investor. Still, the question is a valid one
As many have stated there is a desire to protect themselves. Dictators rarely die in their sleep, while in power. Secondly, as family members of Dictators can be targets after the big giy leave power, and could well be exiled for a long time afterwards, well helps set them up.
Exaggeration. There is a tendency to wildly inflating how much money a Dictator actually has. Usually this is done by conflating personal and national assets, if not by outright lying. Just because you control public accounts in a country does not make it your money or even money that is sent to Swiss Bank Accounts.
There is a usage of the term dictator which merely means one who has absolute power over a country. It has grown increasingly common over the years. I very much expect that, if power successfully passes to Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea will still be called a dictator, despite being hereditary.
The second fact makes the first irrelevant – Leopold did not rule the Congo in his office as King of Belgium, he owned it like a giant plantation, making his role dictatorial rather than regal. The horrific abuses were enabled precisely because Leopold considered himself bound by neither royal custom nor Belgian law.
How come his filthy, corrupt regime wasn’t publicized? He accumulated millions-while “his” people were living in rags. When he croaked, his wife walked off with a fortune estimated at over $65 million. Only Og knows how much he had stashed away in secret bank accounts.
But getting back to the main theme…dictators frequently have to be able to move (Cayman Islands, Switzerland, etc.) at a moment’s notice…some ambitious general might decide the time for a coup has arrived…and you had better be on that estate in Switzerland or the South of France…rather than swinging from a gallows.
Yeah, the gilded palaces are nice, but it all can end rather quickly (and violently).:eek:
Actually, Arafat himself was pretty much an ascetic - besides his freshly-pressed uniforms, he was never known to indulge in many creature comforts. Money, to him, was just a tool for securing loyalty and respect.
His circle of cronies living off his handouts, OTOH…
I’m not really sure what the OP is looking for. Is a poor dictator who casually orders the death of his own people and who rules by fear fear any more moral than a rich one?
One might argue that amassing wealth is morally better, in that it gives a dictator more options. A rich dictator can split and live a life of luxurious retirement. A poor one can’t really retire, and will remain in power until death.
Though honestly, I’m not sure there have been any poor dictators. In a lot of cases we never learn the details of their personal fortune. Did Stalin have billions in Swiss accounts? Or Mao? I dunno.
Arafat was the leader of a gov’t that didn’t even control its own country, nevermind the man himself wielding anything close to absolute power. He doesn’t fit any meaningful definition of “dictator”.
As to the OP, I think a lot of it is that dictators rely on patronage networks to keep them in power, and its a lot easier to run such networks if you personally control a large slush fund you can dole out.