Tom Burgis is a bestselling author and award-winning investigative reporter.His latest book, published in February 2024, is Cuckooland: Where the rich own the truth. His previous book, Kleptopia: How dirty money is conquering the world, was published in 2020 and became an international bestseller. It exposes the hidden connections that link a massacre on the Kazakh steppe and a stolen election in Zimbabwe to the City of London and the White House. The book shows how the world's kleptocrats – those who rule through corruption – are uniting and threaten to overwhelm democracy. 

After abandoning early efforts as a wandering poet, Tom served as a foreign correspondent in South America and Africa. He spent 16 years at the Financial Times, including as a long-standing member of the investigations team. He has exposed corruption scandals, covered terrorist attacks, coups, neo-Nazis and forgotten conflicts, and traced dirty money around the world. His journalism has won awards in the US, UK and Asia. In 2023 he joined The Guardian as an investigations correspondent.

His first book, The Looting Machine, was published in 2015. It revealed how the exploitation of Africa's vast natural resources condemns the continent to corruption, conflict and poverty. The New York Times called it a ‘brave, defiant book’. It won the Overseas Press Club of America's award for the year's best book on international affairs.