Loretta Napoleoni (born 1955) is an Italian journalist and political analyst. She reports on the financing of terrorism, connected finance, and security related topics.

Napoleoni was born in Rome in 1955.^[1] She studied at Sapienza University, Rome.^[1] She holds a MPhil in International Relations and an MA in Terrorism studies from the London School of Economics (LSE). She studied as a Fulbright scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C..She was also a Rotary Scholar at the LSE.^[2] A childhood friend was arrested for involvement in the Red Brigades and Napoleoni wrote her PhD on the group.^[3][1]

In the early 1980s, she worked at the National Bank of Hungary on the convertibility of the Hungarian forint. This became the blueprint for the convertibility of the ruble a decade later.^[4] She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundación Ideas para el Progreso,^[5] the think tank of Spain's Socialist Party, and she is a partner with Oxfam Italia.^[6] Napoleoni's writing has appeared in Italian newspapers such as il Caffè,^[7] La Repubblica,^[8] and Il Fatto Quotidiano.^[9] She has worked as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the Spanish newspaper El Pais..^[10] She is chairperson of the Club de Madrid group studying the financing of terrorism.^[11]

• — (2003). Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745321172.
• — (2005). Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781583226735.
• — (2010). Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1583228951.
• — (2011). Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do. Translated by Stephen Twilley; foreword by Greg Palast. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781609804312.
• — (2016). Merchants of Men: How Jihadists and ISIS Turned Kidnapping and Refugee Trafficking into a Multi-Billion Dollar Business. Penguin USA. ISBN 9781609807085.