Empires to Ashes

Robert Maxwell built a media empire on borrowed money, bullying and fraud. When he mysteriously fell from his yacht in 1991, investigators discovered he'd stolen £460 million from employee pensions. The story of a man who escaped the Holocaust, built an empire and died leaving thousands of pensioners destitute.

Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of Facebook profiles to build psychological warfare tools for elections. Trump, Brexit and democracy itself became their products. When whistleblower Christopher Wylie exposed the truth, it triggered a global reckoning about data, privacy and the manipulation of democracy.

Volkswagen spent years marketing 'clean diesel' while secretly installing software to cheat emissions tests. 11 million cars worldwide were spewing up to 40 times legal pollution limits. When caught, it cost VW $33 billion, sent executives to prison and destroyed Germany's reputation for engineering excellence.

The world's biggest banks secretly manipulated Libor, the interest rate underpinning $350 trillion in financial products. Traders joked in emails about rigging rates that affected mortgages, loans and pensions worldwide. The scandal destroyed trust in banking and proved the system was rigged at its very core.

Jon Corzine went from Goldman Sachs CEO to New Jersey Governor to running MF Global. Then he bet $6.3 billion of client money on European debt. When the trades went bad, $1.6 billion in customer funds 'disappeared.' The story of how political connections couldn't save a Wall Street gambler from himself.