Justin Haber, Malta's former national goalkeeper, was given air-time on Ricky Caruana's podcast following his conviction as a sex offender and his listing in the sex offender's register.  Haber got a full hour to argue that he had been framed, make false allegations about the court process, accuse the magistrate of knowingly ignoring facts, and deny that he was a sex offender.  Caruana joined in with helpful comments and suggestions, reducing the court proceedings and verdict to a farce at the expense of Haber's poor victim, and denigrating young girls and women.

Caruana's reputation laundering involved a manipulative and ethically questionable approach, as was clearly evident from his remarks about under-age children, hinting  that their early development could be the cause for male machos to take liberties.  It was meant to cleanse or obscure negative aspects of Haber's reputation, frequently using disingenuous tactics.  He didn't ask any difficult questions, didn't use any of the evidence on which Haber was convicted to contradict the footballer's false narrative.  He claimed he had only invited Haber to give his version of the events, but he never bothered to invite the legal representative of the victim. 

Caruana allowed, and at time even helped, Haber create a misleading narrative and generate a positive but untruthful picture of the sexual predator.  Caruana knows very well that search engine optimisation techniques will now propagate Haber's reputation laundering up in search results while pushing down his reported conviction.  He is therefore an accomplice in this manipulation which, through methods like astroturfing, can create an illusion of grassroots support of, or positive opinions, about Haber.

What makes this particular podcast outrageous was that (as far as I know) Haber didn't have to pay a single penny for this reputation laundering exercise.  Nor have other persons and institutions who have been on Caruana's podcast whenever they needed to contain the damage to their reputation.  I must emphasise that there is no evidence that Caruana has received any money for the use of his laundering machine, but he is surely benefiting from a number of public contracts.

Of course, reputation laundering for unsavoury clients is part of the work of public relations and marketing companies, lawyers, and image consultants who offer their clients ways to avoid notoriety and evade sanctions. These reputation launderers, which include law firms, increasingly engage in disinformation to hinder investigations and sanctions.

The services such professionals provide can permit kleptocrats, oligarchs, politically exposed persons (PEP), and others to hide their wealth, making it difficult for compliance staff and law enforcement to detect and, ultimately, to disentangle any illicit transactions.  Don't we know, when we have had our own cases of this in recent years!

Reputation laundering is a growing industry.  Kleptocratic actors, shady businessmen, PEPs, and even states have been able to rebrand and transform themselves from shady people or organisations to virgins.  Quite often, this involves making donations to charities and political parties, buying citizenship through golden visa schemes, inviting politicians onto their company boards or employing them as consultants, or giving aid to countries or equally shady regimes.

The job of reputation launderers is to minimise and obscure evidence of corruption and authoritarianism, enabling the perpetrators to enjoy their spoils freely around the world.  Tena Prelec, a research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford says that "it also allows authoritarian governments to manipulate public perception, sometimes even by undermining the functioning elected representatives in national and international institutions."

One well-known example of this from 2016 was Uzbekistan. Following a transition of power, the country mounted a global campaign to rebrand itself.  International attention was directed toward market-friendly economic reforms and away from ongoing corruption and human rights violations.  The restoration of market confidence through this "hearts and minds" initiative ironically created new opportunities for kleptocratic wealth management strategies under a modernized form of authoritarian politics.

Another example was the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  Following a major controversy, including human rights criticisms, Saudi Arabia invested millions in PR campaigns aimed at softening global criticism and highlight reforms and positive initiatives. The state hired top reputation management firms to influence media narratives, sponsor cultural events, and promote charitable activities. 

Digital technologies and the emergence of sophisticated AI-driven tools and deepfake technologies increase opportunities for information manipulation, and their potential to shape public perception grows.  In my view, this kind of manipulation confuses the public, weakens trust in institutions, and makes it harder to hold wrongdoers accountable.

Countries need to empower individuals to critically evaluate the information they encounter online by developing robust digital literacy skills among the public.  On a regulatory level, there is a need for updated legal frameworks that can effectively address the nuances of reputation laundering in the digital context. Ethically, a renewed commitment to transparency and integrity in online communications is essential, both from individuals and institutions. Only through a concerted effort encompassing these various dimensions can the challenges of reputation laundering in the digital age be effectively met.

Legislators in many countries have been reluctant to clamp down on kleptocrats' enablers, even though there are increasing concerns about the influence these individuals and their enablers wield in the spread of disinformation aimed at undermining democracies.   Lawmakers must overcome stiff resistance from what one might call The Four Horsemen: the legal profession, company formation agents, accountants, as well as public relations and marketing companies, whose skills can be hired in the service of reputation laundering.

Legal professionals are the single-most important enabler sector to regulate because they are the most useful to oligarchs and kleptocrats looking to secretly funnel dirty money.  The American Bar Association (ABA) has spent a quarter century in a war of attrition with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) about more intrusive regulations.  

Reputation laundering can be fought by certain techniques. These include digital footprint analysis to trace content origin and identify suspicious patterns,  encouraging fraud organisations to conduct transparency reports about people and organisations to disclose their history and ongoing activities, analysing the volume and sources of positive versus negative coverage in the media, supporting investigative journalism to expose manipulation, and monitoring the social media for coordinated praise or sudden shifts in sentiment.

Prevention is crucially dependent on promoting ethical PR practices, media accountability, and encouraging third-party fact-checking.  By raising awareness and enabling media literacy, the general public can be empowered to question narratives and seek balanced information.

As the lines between authentic and manufactured reputations blur, our ability to discern fact from fiction in this digital age is becoming increasingly challenging.  Trust in online information, which undermines the foundations of informed decision-making, must be restored.   It is imperative that responsible decision-makers and legislators regulate, monitor, and safeguard society against the excesses of reputation laundering by individuals such as Ricky Caruana.