Since February's Ukrainian revolution, life has been a mixed bag in the Eastern European republic. On one hand, it lost Crimea, a tragedy that's become almost predictable to anyone who has ever studied European history. On the bright side, its citizens have gotten to explore the estate of their disgraced former president, currently in exile in Russia. While not quite Disney World, the palace is definitely worthy of a few Instagrams.

Viktor Yanukovych's pad doesn't quite win the prize for most impressive corrupt leader's home, but it's still pretty astounding. Needless to say, it's packed with the standard dictator amenities—tile-inlaid floors, gold-plated toilets, and extensive gardens. But Yanukovych went the extra kilometer, setting aside state money to buy himself a private golf course, a private zoo, a replica of a pirate galleon and a few other fun perks.

And Yanukovych isn't the only big, bad, corrupt political leader whose digs have been in the news recently: South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has gotten into hot water for the $23 million in tax money that he spent on his estate. While he claimed that the funds went toward a much-needed security upgrade, it turned out that he also used government money to buy himself a pool, an amphitheater and a chicken run.

He probably should have held out for the pirate galleon.

Yanukovych and Zuma are impressive, but they don't quite tip the scale when it comes to grand mal government extortion. After all, while robbing from the treasury is a time-honored tradition among corrupt leaders, it's not particularly unique or original. History's greatest villains showed a lot more effort and, frankly, a lot more creativity.

With that in mind, here's our list of the top six corrupt leaders of (relatively) recent history. It's sort of like your high school superlatives list.

If, you know, you went to high school in hell.

Most Likely to Dip a Hand in the Cookie Jar

Suharto

When people tally up history's corrupt leaders, they tend to focus on money. And, when it comes to people who stole from the government, it's hard to beat Indonesian President Suharto. After seizing power in a 1967 coup, Suharto (no last name, sort of like Cher) used a combination of purges, ethnic cleansing, trumped-up student revolts, and a war with East Timor to keep himself in the driver's seat. At the same time, his family reaped between $15 and $35 billion from the state, which works out to between $480 million and $1.13 billion per year.

Most people tend to ignore corruption investigations, at least until they notice that their president is buying himself a huge house, swanky clothes and a private zoo. But, unlike many dictators, Suharto kept his wealth under wraps: he lived somewhat modestly, choosing to stay in a small bungalow instead of the sprawling Indonesian presidential palace. It also helped that, while Suharto had the Midas touch when it came to governance, his family was almost stunningly bad when it came to business. When corruption investigators looked into the billions of dollars that the Suharto's swindled from the government, they found that roughly 90 percent of the money had been lost in a series of mind-bogglingly terrible investments.

Thank God there is no American parable for that — and especially not many of them! — that might operate primarily on a single street at the bottom of Manhattan.

Most Likely to Impersonate a Voodoo God

"Papa Doc" Duvalier

Most dictators limit themselves to financial corruption, but Haiti's Francois Duvalier took an extra step: he corrupted his state's religion. During his 13 years as president of Haiti, Duvalier, also known as "Papa Doc," took on the persona of a voodoo god to terrify and control his population.

Copying the nasal tones and sunglasses commonly associated with Baron Samedi, sort of a voodoo god of the dead, Papa Doc claimed to be the physical manifestation of Haiti, divinely chosen by Jesus. He made Haitians memorize and recite "The Catechism of the Revolution," an edited version of the Lord's prayer that began "Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for Life…"

No god is complete without a collection of disciples, so Papa Doc hired himself a hit squad. Named the "Tonton Macoute" after a voodoo boogeyman, the members wore straw hats, denim shirts, and dark glasses (apparently, voodoo bad guys dress like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz), and carried machetes. Ultimately growing to twice the size of Haiti's regular army, the Tonton Macoute controlled the country through kidnapping, rape and extortion.

Papa Doc's use of voodoo seemingly began as a cynical power play, but he eventually drank his own Kool-Aid. After a 1959 heart attack that probably left him with neurological damage, he became convinced that Clement Barbot, a Tonton Macoute leader who plotted against him, had transformed himself into a black dog. Papa Doc, in a rage, had every black dog he could find rounded up and executed. Later, he caught Barbot and killed him, too.

Most Likely to Dry Hump a Teacher

Silvio Berlusconi

As any American who lived through the Monica Lewinsky scandal knows, there are lots of ways to tarnish a national reputation. But, while Bill Clinton's White House escapades made it hard for an entire generation to pretend that a cigar is just a cigar, they pale beside the unique statecraft of Italy's Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi, who served three terms as Italy's prime minister, has been accused of transgressions ranging from drug trafficking to tax evasion to referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as "an unfuckable lard-ass." However, his greatest hits generally revolve around his famed "bunga bunga" sex parties, which featured a variety of entertainments, including strippers dressed as nuns, a stripper dressed as an Italian prosecutor who was investigating Berlusconi, and a stripper dressed as Barack Obama.

While in poor taste, sexually objectifying the President of the United States doesn't necessarily count as corruption. The same cannot, however, be said of Berlusconi's relationship with Ruby Rubacuori, a Moroccan-born belly dancer. While he was on trial for engaging Rubacuori's services when she was underage, it came out that Berlusconi allegedly used his influence to get Milan police to drop a theft charge against her. His justification? He claimed that she was the niece of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Stay classy, Silvio.

Most Likely to Eat His Enemies

Idi Amin

Although he only ran Uganda for about eight years, Idi Amin managed to get top grades in most of the classic corrupt leader categories. In under a decade, he thoroughly looted the country, killed up to 500,000 people, persecuted several ethnic groups, and started a disastrous war. But in terms of the truly unique leadership techniques that he brought to the table, Amin's greatest achievement was probably his cannibalism.

Even before he rose to power, Amin was famous for torturing his enemies, and during his first year as leader of the country, he executed an estimated 9,000 of his own soldiers – and thousands more of his enemies. Initially, Amin had bodies dumped in the Nile, trusting the crocodiles in the river to dispose of the corpses. But after a while, the reptiles, gorged, began to refuse the flesh buffet floating past. Eventually, corpses clogged the intakes at Uganda's hydroelectric plant, causing rolling brownouts.

Of course, brutality doesn't equal cannibalism, but Amin's fascination with mutilating the corpses of his enemies lent an especially dark note to his reputation. One notable incident was the murder of Army chief of staff Suleiman Hussein. Amin allegedly had General Hussein beaten to death with rifle butts and beheaded. Hussein's head ended up in Amin's fridge, and, eventually, his freezer. According to some accounts, it was the first in what became a large collection of heads.

Amin never denied the allegations that he ate human flesh, although he said that he didn't like it, claiming that "it's too salty for me."

Most Likely to Be Seen Together

Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu

While the jury's still out on whether men and women rule differently, there's little doubt that Elena Ceaucescu brought something special to Romania. As a child, her only good grades were in needlepoint, and she dropped out of primary school at age 14. But if she wasn't a scholar, at least Elena had an eye for talent. She married Communist agitator Nicolae Ceaucescu, who became president of the country in 1967. And, once he was in power, Nicolae helped his wife get the diploma she'd always wanted—as well as a trumped-up Ph.D. Graduate degree in hand, she began rising through the political ranks, eventually becoming deputy prime minister.

The Ceaucescus committed a lot of the classic corrupt leader crimes—including purges, land seizures, ethnic cleansing and mass murder—but their unique contribution was a spectacularly ugly eugenics campaign. In 1967, concerned about falling birth rates, Nicolae severely restricted abortion, the country's primary method of birth control. Later, the Ceaucescus determined that every woman needed to bear five children. To that end, they instituted mandatory gynecological exams, fines for "childless persons," and, for women without children, intrusive interrogations about their sex lives..

Of course, with women being pushed out of the workforce, it became harder and harder to support all those children. An estimated 150,000 kids ended up in state-run orphanages, where they were underfed, dressed in rags and, often, contracted AIDS from shared vaccination needles. Eventually, Romania's child-bearing nightmare came to an end. In 1989, the Ceaucescus were overthrown and, on live television, were executed.

Most Likely to Be Elected President

Warren G. Harding

When it comes to corruption, America is definitely second-rate. Its comparatively heavy government regulation makes long-term embezzling and power-peddling difficult. Still, some presidents have managed to line their pockets with public dough. Of all America's corrupt leaders, however, none can hold a candle to Warren Harding.

Harding wasn't a bad guy. Friendly, well-spoken, and handsome, he was selected as a candidate in part because he was attractive to America's newly minted female voters. Widely regarded as a looker, he was also an outspoken supporter of women's suffrage, a double-threat that pretty much guaranteed him the women's vote, especially when he went up against plain-looking, uncharismatic James M. Cox.

Harding's charms haven't really stood the test of time, but there's little question that he was a hottie in the 1920s. He allegedly had affairs with at least four women, fathered illegitimate children with two, and had meetings with mistress Nan Britton in a White House cloakroom.

While Harding was getting busy in the closet, his political appointees, known as "The Ohio Gang," were pulling schemes of their own. The most famous was probably Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, who took $400,000 in bribes in return for allowing oilmen to drill in Wyoming's Teapot Dome, a naval oil reserve. Even more impressive, however, was Charles Forbes, Director of the Veterans' Administration, who defrauded the government of an estimated $225 million that was earmarked for building hospitals to serve wounded World War I soldiers.

The grand winner, however, was probably Attorney General Harry M. Dougherty. Among other scams, he took a cut of narcotics sales at the Atlanta Penitentiary, sold Presidential pardons, and sold licenses to bootleggers. The Ohio Gang also hosted an ongoing poker game that Harding often sat in on. In one notable hand, he lost a set of White House china.

Eventually, Harding died of what was most likely a heart attack, and several of his appointees were convicted of crimes. Fall, in fact, became the first cabinet secretary to go to prison as a result of misconduct while in office. Harding's replacement, Calvin Coolidge, was far steadier; a strong silent type. In fact, when told of Coolidge's death, Dorothy Parker famously asked "How could they tell?"

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