The overwhelming majority of people in America (and abroad) earn their money through honest means. A few, however, profit through fraud, self-dealing, outright theft, or selfish manipulation of laws and institutions. These few corrupt the public and private spheres they touch.
Academy Award winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s second season of Dirty Money, now online at Netflix, describes some of these few, dishonest people.
Early this morning, I started on Season Two with an episode on Jared Kushner, entitled Slumlord Millionaire: “As Jared Kushner rose from real estate heir to White House adviser, reporters and housing advocates uncovered disturbing patterns at his properties.”
Kushner learned his dishonest tactics from his father (a convicted felon) and shares, with the Trump family into which he married, a corrupt ethos. See The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’ (“Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.”).
Season One’s episodes examined VW’s diesel emissions scandal, payday lenders, Big Pharma, money laundering, manipulation of Canada’s maple syrup market, and Trump as a confidence man.
Season Two, online today, examines Wells Fargo Bank, the corruption of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, illegal importation of gold into the United States, elder abuse, toxic polluters, and Jared Kushner as a slumlord.
Alex Gibney is an accomplished filmmaker, and his series is well-worth watching.