Richard Behar, the Contributing Editor of Investigations for Forbes magazine, was called “one of the most dogged of our watchdogs” by the late Jack Anderson, a founding father of modern investigative reporting. Over a four-decade career, he has tackled it all — from planet-altering crimes in China to transnational business mafias in Russia; from Donald Trump’s business dealings with a mob-connected hustler to fraud on Wall Street; ... Read more
Richard Behar has garnered over 20 journalism awards and was called “one of the most dogged of our watchdogs” by Jack Anderson—a founding father of modern investigative reporting. His groundbreaking book “Madoff: The Final Word” was published in 2024 by Simon & Schuster. (Bernie Madoff ran history’s largest—$68 billion—and longest-running fraud. Behar exposed complicity and wrongdoing by family members.)
From 1982-2004, Behar worked on the staffs of Forbes, Time and Fortune magazines. He has also done assignments for the BBC, CNN, and PBS. He launched a media alliance probing the 2004 Moscow murder of Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov. (Members include Bloomberg, The Economist, and Forbes.) In 2011, he returned to Forbes as a contributing editor, and is one of the narrators of an upcoming docuseries on organized crime in the former Soviet Union.
Awards include the Gerald Loeb, George Polk (twice), National Magazine, and Overseas Press Club (twice) on subjects ranging from terror financing in Karachi to corporate wrongdoing on Wall Street, from China’s economic invasion of Africa to the Russian mob in Siberia. Behar was named one of the 100 top business journalists of the 20th century by The Journalist and Financial Reporter. He received the rarely bestowed Conscience-in-Media Award for “singular commitment to the highest principles of journalism at notable personal cost” from the American Society of Journalists and Authors—for a Time cover story on Scientology. In 2001, he was named “Business Journalist of the Year” by the Corporation of London (the city’s governing body) for two Fortune articles, including an exposé of the Russia aluminum empire of the billionaire Reuben brothers.
In 2002, as part of CNN’s Investigation Team, Behar received the National Headliner Award for “outstanding continuing coverage of attacks on America and their aftermath.” He exposed a leader of the 9-11 attacks, and is the only known journalist to have read the “Phoenix Memo,” the FBI document that warned about bin Laden supporters enrolling in flight schools.
His stories have also ranged from Israeli-Palestinian high-tech joint ventures to anti-Israel media bias; from World Bank corruption to China-sponsored cyber espionage to Donald Trump’s business dealings with a mob-connected felon. In 2017, he filed a federal lawsuit seeking U.S. Secret Service records cataloguing visits to Trump during the 2015 presidential campaign. A judge required their disclosure; it was reversed on appeal and, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Behar’s groundbreaking book “Madoff: The Final Word—published in 2024 by Simon & Schuster—exposes complicity and wrongdoing by the con man’s family members, who are routinely portrayed elsewhere as innocent victims. Behar also established that the fraud began in the early 1960s, when Madoff started on Wall Street. His relationship with...
Richard Behar speaks about what businesses and governments are doing (and not doing) to secure computers, which is essential to national security given that we all are now interconnected. He wrote a definitive story for Forbes magazine (May 2016) about a clandestine cybersecurity military squad in Israel called “Unit 8200.”...
How can Western businesses work and compete in today’s Russia—a country where some of the hottest trends are still intellectual-property “squatting,” raiding companies with armed private-security forces, “commissioning” criminal prosecutions for competitive advantages, and engaging in collusive litigation? How can investors learn what is truly going on in a country...