Baker, Raymond W. 1935–

PERSONAL: Born 1935. Education: Harvard Business School, M.B.A., 1960.

ADDRESSES: Office—Center for International Policy, 1717 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Ste. 801, Washington, DC 20036.

CAREER: Investor, consultant, international businessperson, and writer. In private business, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, 1960–1996. Center for International Policy, Washington, DC, senior fellow; Brookings Institution, guest scholar. 1996–.

WRITINGS:

Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, NJ), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: An international businessman for forty years in over sixty countries, Raymond W. Baker frequently encountered corruption in the marketplace. In 2005 he put his wide knowledge of such practices as money laundering, fake transactions, fictitious pricing, and dummy corporations to use in his book, Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System. As Lewis I. Rice noted in the Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin Online, this illegal flow of money worldwide "bolsters international crime and terrorism and contributes to global inequality and poverty."

Baker estimates in his book that 500 million dollars annually is drained from developing countries in these illegal schemes, worsening global poverty. Those who profit from these procedures include "terrorists, drug lords, and multinational corporate executives," wrote a contributor for Reference & Research Book News. Reviewing Capitalism's Achilles Heel in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram Online, Cecil Johnson found the work "illuminating and disturbing," and further observed that Baker "advances the view that the transfer of dirty money all over the planet is one of the primary causes of world poverty and global instability and is undermining capitalism's underlying ideals." However, Baker, speaking with Rice, was optimistic that such practices could be stopped: "The illegalities I write about can be curtailed merely with the application of political will. It is not technically difficult to do. If we decide we want it to happen, it will happen."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Asia Times, September 24, 2005, Gary LaMoshi, "Follow the Money."

Bloomberg, July 11, 2005, James Pressley, "How the G-8 Can Help Africa—Choke $1 Tillion in Dirty Money."

Financial Times, August 10, 2005, Frank Partnoy,"Must Reads for Budding Fraudsters."

Japan Times, March 12, 2006, Jeff Kingston, "Money Laundering and Global Debt."

Little Trade, August, 2005, review of Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, p. 56.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2005, review of Capitalism's Achilles Heel.

ONLINE

Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram Online, http://www.dfw.com/ (August 29, 2005), Cecil Johnson, "The Menace of Hijacked Capitalism," review of Capitalism's Achilles Heel.

Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin Online, http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/ (March 27, 2006), "Q & A: Dirty Money: Raymond Baker Explores the Free Market's Demimonde"; (March 27, 2006), Lewis I. Rice, "The Deleterious Effects of Dirty Money."