Movies like backstabbing for beginners

Backstabbing for Beginners is a 2018 political thriller film directed and co-written by Per Fly, and based on the eponymous memoirs of Michael Soussan. It follows the real life corruption scandal in the UN Oil-for-Food Programme, and stars Theo James and Ben Kingsley.

The film follows Michael Sullivan, the son of US State Department diplomat who died when Michael was young. Michael leaves a lucrative job at a large bank and lands his dream job as a diplomat with the United Nations (UN), in the fall of 2002. He is assigned to work as an assistant to Under-Secretary-General Costa "Pasha" Passaris, the head of the Oil-for-Food Programme, operated since 1995 to help the citizens of Iraq without allowing the oil sales to boost Saddam Hussein and his regime. On his first visit to Baghdad, local UN chief diplomat Christina Dupre makes it clear to Pasha that she is disturbed by the corruption in the programme, and plans to publish a report voicing her concerns. This is the first Michael hears of the problem, and over the course of the film he uncovers a major corruption scandal, whereby payoffs and bribes diverted $20 billion of the funds away from food and into the hands of companies, banks, officials of various governments, and officials of the UN itself, possibly including Pasha, so that Hussein can pocket over $1 billion of the funds.