The cases in this section relate to four countries – Angola, Turkey, Malaysia and South Africa – and to one organization, FIFA. While it is not a state that is captured in the case of FIFA, the international governing body of football has many state-like features, including a monopoly over the setting and enforcement of rules in this significant realm of economic activity. Sepp Blatter's behaviour is characteristic of a typical kleptocrat: he and his cronies abused their power not only to embezzle funds from the organization but also to shape its development, and that of major international sporting events, in ways that maximized their private gain. By reviewing the mechanisms through which the kleptocrats in these case studies captured the institutions in their respective domains, we seek to make the case for extending these concepts to the study of organizations that play a role in governing parts of the global society and economy.

Chapter 8 set out five areas for comparative analysis of our case studies. The first three correspond to the three spheres of capture – the formation of the rules of the game, their implementation and the disabling of accountability institutions. A fourth category considers the role of external actors in enabling or facilitating the actions of kleptocrats, while the final category considers the impact of rule by kleptocrats on the intended beneficiaries of governance and wider society. The five cases are compared on each of these mechanism areas below and the key points summarized in Table 10.1.

All of these kleptocrats were elected to power, and they do not hesitate to parade this democratic mandate to justify their subsequent behaviour, but questions hang over the fairness of elections in several cases. Blatter's election to the FIFA presidency in 1998 was marked by allegations that 20 members of the “electorate”, comprising the heads of football associations around the world, had received bribes totalling $1 million in exchange for their support (Campbell & Kuper 1999). We learned that Erdoğan was only permitted to run for office because his ally, Abdullah Gül, lifted a ban that otherwise prevented him from doing so. Razak gained power not through an election but because the former prime minister of Malaysia stood down and named him as a successor, although he did have to win the support of his party. He then used his power to appoint himself finance minister and chair of 1MDB.