Misha Glenny: ‘Crime exerts a fascination that ordinary politics doesn’t’

Award-winning journalist Misha Glenny, 60, specialises in central and eastern Europe, global organised crime and cybersecurity. He was educated in Oxford, Bristol and Prague, before working for the Guardian and the BBC. Earlier this year, he was executive producer of BBC One drama McMafia, inspired by his 2008 book of the same name.

Were you happy how the McMafia TV series turned out?
Extremely. I’d given up on the book ever transferring to the screen. It was optioned before I’d even completed the manuscript, over a decade ago, so I was delighted when the BBC team picked it up again three years ago. They wanted to add a great narrative, while staying true to the atmosphere of global politics and organised crime that I’d written about. The book was a success by its own standards – it went down well in policy circles, law-enforcement people liked it, criminals did too – but the impact of the TV series was huge in comparison. Suddenly, it wasn’t tens of thousands around the world discussing it, it was millions.

Now you’re taking your McMafia talk to Edinburgh festival. Looking forward to it?
Very much. I’m working with a director for this show. I wanted to inject a more theatrical element and use multimedia. My original degree was in drama and I did lots of acting then, so it’s not my first time treading the boards [laughs]. I’m not a frustrated actor, though, I promise.

What will you cover in the show?
How organised crime, political corruption and economic decline are all integrated. Are we looking at a pre-fascist period in certain countries? These issues are particularly critical at the moment. What I’ve noticed from my other talks this year is that people are desperate to make sense of what’s going on in the world and how we’ve stumbled into such a significant mess. Q&A sessions after the talks have got longer and longer. There’s a real hunger to get to grips with an increasingly unstable, dangerous situation.

So how have we stumbled into this mess?
If there’s one thing I can do well, it’s paint the big picture and explain how the pieces fit together. This crisis developed out of two key events: the 1986 Big Bang, which lifted capital controls and supercharged globalisation, and 1989’s fall of communism. Together, they represented the end of an epoch that began with the French Revolution. We’ve now entered that period of instability that accompanies most interregnums. Organised crime is not a separate entity that bad guys indulge in on the side. It’s at the front and centre of growing inequality – the rise of money laundering, for example. Crime exerts a fascination that ordinary politics doesn’t, so for me it’s a useful entry point.

Edinburgh fringe is known for its comedy. Are there laughs in your show too?
I’m quite ironic and irreverent about organised crime. I’ve also written some knockout gags for it. People might go away thinking: “We’re screwed but at least that was an entertaining way to find out.”

The UK has requested that Russia extradites two Salisbury suspects. Will they get short shrift?
I’m confident it won’t result in anything concrete, but it will be fascinating to find out who the suspects are and their institutional affiliation. It remains enigmatic what the hell was going on with novichok. If they wanted to kill Skripal, why not just put a gun to his head? If they wanted to demonstrate the deadliness of novichok, why didn’t it kill him? And what had he done that made them violate the spy swap protocol? Both governments have been very tight with information. I don’t think the cabinet was told because Theresa May reasoned, quite understandably, that if she told someone like Boris Johnson, it would get leaked.

What do you make of Trump and Putin’s relationship?
If Trump really is a Russian stooge, he’s a pretty incompetent operator. He leaves a trail of crap behind him and Robert Mueller will uncover it, which might be embarrassing for both nations. But Putin’s got his own problems: the Russian economy is hurting, support for him is in steady decline and his decision to raise the pensionable age has angered people. Much of Putin’s power rests on the fact that he cleared up 90s gangster capitalism and restored a sense of Soviet order. If he can’t offer the social security that Russians demand, he could soon be in serious trouble. Russia might look like a geopolitical giant, but it faces crises that even somebody of Putin’s cunning might struggle to manage.

How did Putin get this summer’s World Cup to go so smoothly?
It’s like when I’m doing investigative journalism and find myself in a sticky situation. If suddenly the Serb army is heading towards me at a pace and I have to get out, I throw money at the problem. That’s what Putin did. He deployed enormous law-enforcement forces. He made it very clear to the hooligan element that if they stepped out of line, he’d come down like a ton of bricks. He employed the best PR agencies. You’ve got to take your hat off to him, he did a bloody good job.

Can tech companies and governments ever control online interference in elections?
As the web’s network systems are currently structured, the answer is a resounding no. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen how easy it is to disrupt major systems. Look at last May’s WannaCry attack. The actual malware was shittily constructed, but it still did critical damage to the NHS in the UK, German railways, Spanish telecoms, Chinese banks, the Ministry of the Interior in Russia… National infrastructures are frighteningly vulnerable to cyber attack. It’s only when you see the political instability caused by the victory of somebody like Trump that you start being concerned about this stuff. It’s very serious indeed.

The BBC is under fire for false equivalence and pro-Brexit bias. What do you think?
Personally, I’m very concerned about Brexit and hostile to it. But for fear of repercussions, which I can partially understand, the BBC has bent over backwards on the equivalency debate, like it has on global warming and climate change deniers. I fear we’re at the beginning of a process to dismantle the BBC, but one can only ever be reminded of Joni Mitchell’s lyric: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” Anyone overseas, if they see an erosion of the BBC, says: “Are you effing mad?” It’s such a respected, valuable marker for editorial independence.

You’ve investigated many dangerous criminals. Is your personal security an issue?
After McMafia came out, I had warnings from a Bulgarian group and the presidency of Macedonia. It was indicated that I should keep away from both those countries, which I did for five or six years. When I go and meet gangsters, it usually takes months to set up. I’m very upfront about what I’m doing beforehand and have a network of local friends who know where I’m going and for how long. I’m not entirely without security measures, but there’s still an element of risk.

A second series of McMafia has been commissioned. What can you tell us about that?
It’s currently in the writer’s room. It’s set two years later and Alex Godman [played by James Norton] is now a proper organised crime figure. He’s grown into the job and it’ll be a much more confident, less tight-lipped Alex than we saw before. It’s going to be great fun.

Isn’t there also a film adaptation in the pipeline of your 2015 book Nemesis, about the Brazilian underworld?
There is. A script has been commissioned from Brock Norman Brock, who wrote Bronson. It’s slated to be directed by Matt Heineman, who made a fantastic documentary called Cartel Land about the Mexican drug syndicates. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it comes off because I can’t think of a better team to do it. I’m also in the early stages of working on a TV drama about a female teenage hacker who gets tangled up with GCHQ and an Israeli cybersecurity firm. As you do.

Misha Glenny: McMafia is at the Edinburgh fringe 20-26 August (Assembly Checkpoint)