Misha Glenny

Misha Glenny is an expert on international organised crime and cyber security.

Misha Glenny is an award-winning journalist who made a name for himself as the BBC’s Central Europe Correspondent covering the 1989 revolutions and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He has a Sony Gold Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting and is also a winner of BT’s Information Security Journalist of The Year.

His book McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime and DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia were shortlisted for several prizes, and McMafia has been adapted in a joint production between AMC (in the US) and the BBC into a major television series that has recently been commissioned for a second season.

His most recent book, Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio, is the biography of the former head of a major Brazilian cocaine cartel who Misha interviewed at length in prison. Nemesis is also in development as a television drama series.

Misha’s series Putin: Prisoner of Power was one of Audible’s best-selling politics podcasts in 2019 as was his 2020 follow up, The Rise of the Iron Men, looking at the surge in support for Trump, Johnson, Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Modi and Duterte.

Misha can speak on all aspects of organised crime, from money laundering to cyber malfeasance, people smuggling and the drugs trade. He has unique insights into how new technology is reshaping traditional organised crime in the narcotics, smuggling and sex trades. He also draws on his background in geopolitics to show how great power relations are driving insecurity in cyberspace, and why companies cannot rely on government to shore-up their vulnerabilities.

Misha is currently writing a new book, The Cobra Effect: A History of the Present, in which he will explain exactly why our present is so turbulent, looking back over the past century in which he has met and discussed the world with many of its key players.
He is also developing a major new drama series, Amazonia, which plays out against one of the biggest dramas of all – the deforestation of the Amazon.