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The ten most successful kleptocrats?

Directly below you will find a list of the most influential businessmen in history. For purposes of contrast, Ben Muse refers us to a list of the ten biggest political kleptocrats, here goes:

1. Mohamed Suharto President of Indonesia from 1967-98: US$15 to 35 billion
2. Ferdinand Marcos President of the Philippines from 1972-86 US$5 to 10 billion
3. Mobutu Sese Seko President of Zaire from 1965-97 US$5 billion
4. Sani Abacha President of Nigeria from 1993-98 US$2 to 5 billion
5. Slobodan Milosevic President of Serbia/Yugoslavia from 1989-2000 US$1 billion
6. Jean-Claude Duvalier President of Haiti from 1971-86 US$300 to 800 million
7. Alberto Fujimori President of Peru from 1990-2000 US$600 million
8. Pavlo Lazarenko Prime Minister of Ukraine from 1996-97 US$114 to 200 million
9. Arnoldo Alemán President of Nicaragua from 1997-2002 US$100 million
10. Joseph Estrada President of the Philippines from 1998-2001 US$78 to 80 million

It depends, of course, on what you count as stolen. Arguably some Saudis should make the list, though they claim to own the oil legitimately. Of course relative to gdp, Haiti's Duvalier is a clear number one.

Addendum: Here is a good article on how Suharto did it.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 27, 2004 at 07:49 PM in History | Permalink

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