I won't thread-jack but if you want more info on the ins and outs of money in politics I can help you paint that picture. So message me if you want research help there.
My WIP has two villains. One is a moderately successful lawyer, and the other an older medical professional. Both committed their villainies long ago through their careers, in total absence of awareness of what each other did, but stepped outside the bounds of their professional ethics in order to commit them. A third villain, who was an alcoholic single mother, died of old age before the action of the novel started. Two other potential villains, who are the main protagonist's grandparents, turn out, after much confusion, to be clean.
I rarely have actual villains in my stories. One story had members of a religious cult as the villains - they just worked for their church accepting public donations. Another story had a big Faceless Government Bureaucracy as the villain - kind of like a Kafka story. Off the top of my head, I can't remember any other villains. The rest of my stories just have nature as a villain, or decent people who are at cross-purposes with the MC.
My villain fumes from an astral plane as its body lies in a forced hibernation (it is released about halfway through the story). It is not entirely incapable in this state, though is merely able to watch through the eyes of its subordinates as they sort of do what he wants them to. When freed, the plans it had before being forced into slumber are put on hold so that it can locate the protagonist who is unknowingly causing great trouble for the antagonist's race.
One is a successful cientist (specializing in physics and astrophysics) whose basically an enterpreneur, another is the leader of a large criminal organization (getting most funds from illegal drug and firearms trade as well as human trafficking and prostitutes), and another is the leader of an elite mercenary group. Oh, and one more important villain works for the criminal organization as a bodyguard, enforcer, torturer, and all-around thug(ess) when she isn't at the gym, using steroids and building even more freakishly large muscles and twisting people into knots and knocking them out at the local mixed martial arts club and tournaments.
Depends on the villain. My "Big Bad" is the typical despotic dictator, his Right-hand man is a radio preacher, and another Villain runs a workhouse.
