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Butler to the World: The Book the Oligarchs Don't Want You to Read - How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything
In his punchy follow-up to Moneyland, Oliver Bullough's Butler to the World unravels the dark secret of how Britain placed itself at the centre of the global offshore economy and at the service of the worst people in the world…
Audiobook
First published May 10, 2022
About the author
Oliver Bullough
8 books337 followersI moved to Russia in 1999, after growing up in mid-Wales and studying at Oxford University. I had no particular plan, beyond a desire to learn Russian, but got a job at a local magazine and realised I liked finding things out and writing about them.
The next year I moved to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, then joined Reuters news agency, which sent me to Moscow. The first major story I reported on was the Moscow theatre siege of 2002, when a group of Chechens seized a theatre in the capital.
It both horrified and fascinated me, and I resolved to find out as much as I could about Chechnya and the North Caucasus, to try to understand the roots of the conflict that had burst so unexpectedly into my life. I travelled extensively in the mountains that form Russia’s southern border, falling in love with the scenery, the food and above all the warm and welcoming people.
When I left Russia in 2006, I was exhausted by it, however. I had seen too much misery and never wanted to write about Chechnya again. But I had promised to give a talk to a society in London. After the talk, I was asked if I would ever write a book about what I had seen. I wrote down a few thoughts, took them to a friend who knew about books, and she introduced me to a publisher.
I travelled in a dozen countries to meet all the people I needed for the stories I wanted to tell, and wrote them down in Let Our Fame Be Great. Penguin published it in the UK in 2010. It won the Oxfam Emerging Writer Prize and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize, with prize judge James Naughtie calling it “an extraordinary book... a wonderful part-travelogue, part-history”. Basic Books published it in the United States, where the Overseas Press Club awarded it the Cornelius Ryan Award for “best nonfiction book on international affairs”.
After it came out, though, a number of Russian friends objected that I had made the Russians into the villains. I don’t think I did, but their complaints chewed away at me a little. Perhaps some readers had been left feeling all Russians were complicit in the crimes of their leaders. The Russians after all suffered as much as anyone at the hands of the government in Moscow.
That provoked me into writing my second book, The Last Man in Russia, which describes the struggle of a Russian to live in freedom and the efforts of Soviet officials to stop him. The life story of Father Dmitry, the Orthodox priest I chose as my central figure, seems to me to mirror the life of his whole nation, which is beset by depression and alcoholism.
Travelling to meet the people I wanted to talk to and to see the places I wanted to describe took me to the far north of Russia, to rotting gulag towns; to the west of Russia, to half-abandoned villages; and to the Ural Mountains, where the communists locked up their doughtiest opponents; and to Moscow itself, that great fat spider in the centre of its web.
I would like to write more books one day but, at the moment, I’m concentrating on my day job as Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. I also write freelance articles and worry about the Welsh rugby team.
http://www.oliverbullough.com/biograp...
The next year I moved to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, then joined Reuters news agency, which sent me to Moscow. The first major story I reported on was the Moscow theatre siege of 2002, when a group of Chechens seized a theatre in the capital.
It both horrified and fascinated me, and I resolved to find out as much as I could about Chechnya and the North Caucasus, to try to understand the roots of the conflict that had burst so unexpectedly into my life. I travelled extensively in the mountains that form Russia’s southern border, falling in love with the scenery, the food and above all the warm and welcoming people.
When I left Russia in 2006, I was exhausted by it, however. I had seen too much misery and never wanted to write about Chechnya again. But I had promised to give a talk to a society in London. After the talk, I was asked if I would ever write a book about what I had seen. I wrote down a few thoughts, took them to a friend who knew about books, and she introduced me to a publisher.
I travelled in a dozen countries to meet all the people I needed for the stories I wanted to tell, and wrote them down in Let Our Fame Be Great. Penguin published it in the UK in 2010. It won the Oxfam Emerging Writer Prize and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize, with prize judge James Naughtie calling it “an extraordinary book... a wonderful part-travelogue, part-history”. Basic Books published it in the United States, where the Overseas Press Club awarded it the Cornelius Ryan Award for “best nonfiction book on international affairs”.
After it came out, though, a number of Russian friends objected that I had made the Russians into the villains. I don’t think I did, but their complaints chewed away at me a little. Perhaps some readers had been left feeling all Russians were complicit in the crimes of their leaders. The Russians after all suffered as much as anyone at the hands of the government in Moscow.
That provoked me into writing my second book, The Last Man in Russia, which describes the struggle of a Russian to live in freedom and the efforts of Soviet officials to stop him. The life story of Father Dmitry, the Orthodox priest I chose as my central figure, seems to me to mirror the life of his whole nation, which is beset by depression and alcoholism.
Travelling to meet the people I wanted to talk to and to see the places I wanted to describe took me to the far north of Russia, to rotting gulag towns; to the west of Russia, to half-abandoned villages; and to the Ural Mountains, where the communists locked up their doughtiest opponents; and to Moscow itself, that great fat spider in the centre of its web.
I would like to write more books one day but, at the moment, I’m concentrating on my day job as Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. I also write freelance articles and worry about the Welsh rugby team.
http://www.oliverbullough.com/biograp...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 255 reviews
September 18, 2024
Cui Bono? Or The Butler did it?
If I don't do it, somebody else will."
“Boiled down to its essentials, finance always does the same thing: it takes money from people who have it but don’t need it, and gives it to people who need it and don’t have it, and earns a fee for its trouble. Governments try to regulate this process, to direct the funding toward the causes they care about, and financial institutions try to avoid those rules so they can direct the funding toward the causes that will pay the largest fees. That is financial innovation, which is simply an artificial way of exploiting artificial rules governing the artificial thing we call money, and normally involves finding mismatches between regulations in different countries. It’s clever, but it adds nothing to the sum of human achievement.”
A thoroughly fascinating, sobering and depressing read/listen and I'm awarding it the full 5 stars, even though I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Oliver Bullough for destroying or at least serioysly souring my Jeeves-Bertie image.
I understand why he did it -and oh boy, does it throw a punch!- but I'm very unhappy about it all the same. Drawing a comparison between one of my favourite literary duo and Britain's -or rather "the City of London's- financial shenanigans makes sense, but it hurts all the same (obviously, Bullough wants it to hurt, the more painful the punch, the stronger the underlying message).
Recommended for those, who'd like a clear picture and a historical overview of the murky waters and shady deals of super rich tax dodgers, cleptocrats, corrupt politicians, financial bigwigs, offshore shell companies and other "valuable" members of our society (not only those in Britain, obviously) who blithely ignore the infinite damage & suffering the rest of the world has to put up with in the wake of their despicable actions, while governments (mostly) turn a blind or even a benevolent eye to it all.
Unsurprisingly, Hungary and the guy we have the extremely, tragically bad luck to call our prime minister, Viktor Orban also feature in the story. While OB simply calls him cleptocrat-adjacent, unfortunately we know better or worse: he's turned into a cleptocrat himself and turned Hungary into a political butler to Russia & China for his own gains to the infinite detriment of our country. (Excuse me while I'll go away to vomit discreetly.)
WARNING for fans of Jeeves! Treat with caution and read at your peril!!
Audiobook very well narrated by the author himself.
(And now I need to find a Wodehouse book to read to balance this all.)
If I don't do it, somebody else will."
“Boiled down to its essentials, finance always does the same thing: it takes money from people who have it but don’t need it, and gives it to people who need it and don’t have it, and earns a fee for its trouble. Governments try to regulate this process, to direct the funding toward the causes they care about, and financial institutions try to avoid those rules so they can direct the funding toward the causes that will pay the largest fees. That is financial innovation, which is simply an artificial way of exploiting artificial rules governing the artificial thing we call money, and normally involves finding mismatches between regulations in different countries. It’s clever, but it adds nothing to the sum of human achievement.”
A thoroughly fascinating, sobering and depressing read/listen and I'm awarding it the full 5 stars, even though I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Oliver Bullough for destroying or at least serioysly souring my Jeeves-Bertie image.
I understand why he did it -and oh boy, does it throw a punch!- but I'm very unhappy about it all the same. Drawing a comparison between one of my favourite literary duo and Britain's -or rather "the City of London's- financial shenanigans makes sense, but it hurts all the same (obviously, Bullough wants it to hurt, the more painful the punch, the stronger the underlying message).
Recommended for those, who'd like a clear picture and a historical overview of the murky waters and shady deals of super rich tax dodgers, cleptocrats, corrupt politicians, financial bigwigs, offshore shell companies and other "valuable" members of our society (not only those in Britain, obviously) who blithely ignore the infinite damage & suffering the rest of the world has to put up with in the wake of their despicable actions, while governments (mostly) turn a blind or even a benevolent eye to it all.
Unsurprisingly, Hungary and the guy we have the extremely, tragically bad luck to call our prime minister, Viktor Orban also feature in the story. While OB simply calls him cleptocrat-adjacent, unfortunately we know better or worse: he's turned into a cleptocrat himself and turned Hungary into a political butler to Russia & China for his own gains to the infinite detriment of our country. (Excuse me while I'll go away to vomit discreetly.)
WARNING for fans of Jeeves! Treat with caution and read at your peril!!
Audiobook very well narrated by the author himself.
(And now I need to find a Wodehouse book to read to balance this all.)
September 1, 2022
I won this as a goodreads giveaway. Thank you St. Martin’s Press.
This book read like an espionage novel. Being a fan of many espionage writers, I’m familiar as to what goes in them. This is a book that John LeCarre would have enjoyed reading.
So now when I look at a map of the world, I’ll be saying to myself offshore bank haven, gambling hot spot, and so forth.
I enjoyed learning about the history as to why some of these locations were chosen. The book also contains so many fascinating details, you just want to keep reading to find out what happened.
This one is well worth the time.
This book read like an espionage novel. Being a fan of many espionage writers, I’m familiar as to what goes in them. This is a book that John LeCarre would have enjoyed reading.
So now when I look at a map of the world, I’ll be saying to myself offshore bank haven, gambling hot spot, and so forth.
I enjoyed learning about the history as to why some of these locations were chosen. The book also contains so many fascinating details, you just want to keep reading to find out what happened.
This one is well worth the time.
May 29, 2022
If you're not up on your oligarchs, kleptocrats and millionaire scammers, Oliver Bullough's Butler to the World will come as a major shock. In it, he shows how both British government and finance have altered or ignored laws, welcomed criminals and exported crime to other countries, all in the name of income. The City, London’s financial hub, “must be protected at all costs”, no matter how many millions of lives are shattered elsewhere around the world. The UK will accommodate all who flash a wad, no matter where it came from.
This is a truly remarkable book. Bullough builds relentlessly, starting with relatively ordinary crime and insufferable selfishness. But every chapter steps it up a notch or ten, as the UK and its former colonies engage in a race to the bottom of morality. It is well researched, well documented, engagingly written, and endlessly diverting. But the story is revolting.
His unifying idea is the classic English butler, Jeeves, who can fix anything for his master, even if he has to bribe or beat up a cop to do it. The result is always calm seas, and life goes on for Jeeves’ master, Bertie Wooster, spoiled, incompetent upper class brat. This is Bullough's portrait of the UK. The country continually finds ways to accept and launder dirty money, offer thieves not just citizenship, but honors, and racks up gigantic financial gains while aiding them to become established, if not sainted. And because everything financial is hidden, the government benefits not at all. Everything goes to the boys in The City. This is not good government.
Bullough has a very economic style. Here's how summarizes what I just explained: "It operates as a gigantic loophole, undercutting other countries’ rules, massaging down tax rates, neutering regulations, laundering foreign criminals’ money. It’s not just that Britain isn’t investigating the crooks; it’s helping them, too."
It starts hundreds of years ago, when Scotland allowed the formation of limited partnerships, feudal firms that never had to reveal ownership, activities or pay taxes. Today, numerous firms continue to pop up in Scotland, using the same short list of addresses - private homes where the occupants set up these companies all day long. Panama is just a spruced-up copy of what the UK invented.
The corruption ramps up throughout British history. Whole chapters of the book are devoted the Suez Canal zone, the BVI, Gibraltar and Scotland. Gibraltar doesn’t get much press any more, but what happened there is textbook government caving to finance. Gambling was determined to be the savior of the tiny and artificial economy of this peninsula on a rock, no bigger than a large park. Casinos and lotteries were the names of the games, and as more and more laws were relaxed or nullified, more gambling entities moved there to escape regulation and taxation. In the race to the bottom, Gibraltar kept slashing its tax rates for gambling revenues. They ultimately dropped to 1%, undercutting even the mother country. Now with the internet, online gambling, horrifically fixed so the customer can never win, and lotteries from all over, base themselves in Gibraltar. The money of the world flows directly to them, unimpeded by bureaucracy, regulation or financial restrictions. The amount of money draining from the poor of England alone is stunning. Thousands of pounds per person per year. And the British government? Just watching. Ironically, the government has had to complain; it loses not only the cash everyone wastes on lotteries, but the companies have moved away so they can’t be taxed, either. This is the model of what Britain has given to the world.
The lessons were learned in the British Virgin Islands, where it dawned on some lawyers that they could make a decent living setting up shell companies for the rich overseas. It festooned to its logical conclusion in the Cayman Islands, which has been built entirely on shell companies to hide the fortunes of the corrupt elected, dictators, rich executives and of course every kind of criminal imaginable. An American financial lawyer found the BVI law firm (before the internet, when research was nearly impossible and telephoning was absurdly expensive) and told them what he wanted to set up. So they did. He even wrote the laws for island governments to adopt.
The money their customers stole has simply gone missing from the country of origin, denying everyone there all kinds of services. Bullough uses the example of dirt poor Moldova, where a billion dollars disappeared into shell companies in Scotland. For the less than a million poor Moldovans, a billion dollars is gigantic, and will not be made up any time soon. The result is decaying infrastructure and little or no services. Moldova, like so many other countries, was not poor; it was ripped off. Worldwide, estimates for money stashed in shell companies is between 12 and 20 trillion dollars.
Another example comes from today’s news, where Russian troops invading Ukraine find themselves poorly armed and without food, so that they have to scavenge. The reason? The huge buildup in the military budget went into shell companies for top generals and politicians, who all seem to have gigantic yachts in Cypress (another British colony that learned well), while draftees sent to Ukraine have to deal with food rations that expired (stale-dated) in 2015. Vladimir Putin’s skimming is estimated to be as high as a hundred billion US dollars. One of his accounts was discovered in the Panama Papers, where a modest cellist from St. Petersburg was the named owner of a shell company with a billion US dollars in it. Turns out he was a neighbor and friend of Putin’s when they were both just starting out. All this money is simply not going to what it was collected for. This is why Bullough can say countries like the Caymans, the BVI and most of all the UK are busy exporting poverty and suffering, by importing and investing the ill-gotten gains of criminals.
There is a chapter on the considerable lengths the British government has gone to ensure nothing changes. There have been cases where members of Parliament have (naively) thought they could introduce bills to regulate this known and obvious criminal activity. The latest is an MP by the name of Roger Mullin:
“Unbeknownst to Mullin and indeed to pretty much everyone else, the Treasury and the private equity industry were actually seeking to loosen those same regulations, so limited partnerships would have to report even less information to the authorities than they already did. They had no interest in whether Eastern European money launderers could or could not do business, but they did want investments to be even more profitable than they already were. Remember how the Bank of England doomed controls on international money flows in the 1950s? The Treasury was doing exactly the same thing now.
“And the Treasury had a great advantage in this battle, thanks to a little-known provision in parliamentary rules called a legislative reform order. To get tighter restrictions on SLPs, Mullin needed to pass an actual law,” while loosening the rules only required a simple order to do so.
The great butlering innovation of British finance is called the Eurodollar. Created in the 1950s, 50 years before the euro currency came into being, it is simply a way for bankers to avoid acknowledging the color of cash. If dollars are tracked, they can call it a Eurodollar deal and the authorities have no say. It works the other way just as well. Bullough compares it to light: it can be a wave or a particle, depending on whatever works at the moment. Eurodollar trading allows vast pools of money to transit all over the world, instantly, and the taxman can’t touch them, no matter where they land – or they just change labels and move on again. Here too, there is no direct benefit to the government of the UK, but it keeps The City humming, and those are the people in power.
Bullough has a delightful chapter on the people running the Bank of England and the financial companies. Their old boy network is a strictly closed club, where those inside call each other by first names, and they signify an outsider (from a different school, or God forbid, a university, or worse - Jewish) by addressing them by last name only, even in official communications. They operate on gut feelings and the need to keep the money pumping. Who they hurt, including the whole country, is of no concern. They are money men, and their lives are to keep it coming in. Law is a distraction to be minimized or eliminated.
As early as 1907, records show debates in London using the excuse that Britain would simply lose money if other jurisdictions taxed less than London did, and that there was no point in tightening laws until other countries did so as well. This twin excuse has succeeded everywhere, all over the world, every time the issue comes up. The result is this totally amoral race - to the bottom. And the UK is pretty much there now.
Today, regulators that have had their budgets continually slashed are swamped with reports from banks about suspicious accounts and transactions, but they don’t even have the staff to read them all. So the vast majority of the filings don’t ever get read, just filed, and only a sliver (.04%) have penalties imposed. Because of this, 98.5% of cases never even get reported. In other words, the UK offers all but zero chance being caught.
There are 26 responsible financial agencies in the UK, all overstretched, underfunded, and incapable of carrying out their mandates. It has come to the point where if you are rich enough, you can bring a criminal case yourself in England, because the police can’t afford it. Con artists have gone to prison and had all their assets seized from these private prosecutions. This is just as wrong.
In one galling story, an accountant from Azerbaijan was ripped off by a Russian con artist in England. It was a phony bank branch in a gleaming office tower in Hong Kong, as elaborate as anything in the film The Sting. He got some degree of justice, but the courts were astonishingly more worried about reputational damage to the profession than meting out justice. As Bullough tells it:
“The SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority) fined him (the con man) £45,000, which is better than nothing, but the ruling revealed that its primary concern was whether Sharif (the victim) had damaged the reputation of his profession and made no mention at all of the damage that money laundering does to the victims of corruption in Azerbaijan. It took comfort from the fact that ‘no client had suffered loss as a result’ of Sharif’s conduct, which is particularly perverse because the whole point of filing a suspicious activity report is to allow the authorities to confiscate criminal wealth.” This is a stunning condemnation all by itself.
In sum, “Britain has essentially outsourced responsibility for stopping money laundering to the money launderers, and is failing to stop dirty money as a result. Much of the time the same bodies tasked with regulating professionals’ financial transactions are also charged with lobbying government on their behalf, while also relying on those same professionals’ membership fees to keep solvent.” It is business as usual in the UK.
This is Bullough's beat. He writes about it in numerous publications. He is even a guide on the London Kleptocracy Tours, where instead of Hollywood film stars' homes, the tours drift past the mansions and flats of the world's biggest thieves. These are civil servants like Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov, who can somehow afford to give his 21 year old daughter (he is a bigamist with at least two families) her first apartment, a four million pound flat in the fashionable west end. Meanwhile the Chancellor of the Exchequer has moved out of his Downing Street flat after it was discovered his wife considers herself non-domiciled in Britain so that she pays no taxes on the IT fortune she inherited in her native India. Instead, they have moved back to their luxury accommodations all the way over in Kensington, a couple of miles west. Her husband, Rishi Sunak, has called for an investigation, not of his wife’s dodgy finances, but how the world found out about them. The list is endless.
I realized when I reviewed Bullough’s previous book, Moneyland, that this was the person everyone needs to explain financial shenanigans. Here, with Butler to the World, he proves it firmly again. The book is not just shocking, but often laughably so. It is as entertaining as it is informative.
The UK may be a butler to criminals, but it is a farcical one. Jeeves would probably take offense.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
This is a truly remarkable book. Bullough builds relentlessly, starting with relatively ordinary crime and insufferable selfishness. But every chapter steps it up a notch or ten, as the UK and its former colonies engage in a race to the bottom of morality. It is well researched, well documented, engagingly written, and endlessly diverting. But the story is revolting.
His unifying idea is the classic English butler, Jeeves, who can fix anything for his master, even if he has to bribe or beat up a cop to do it. The result is always calm seas, and life goes on for Jeeves’ master, Bertie Wooster, spoiled, incompetent upper class brat. This is Bullough's portrait of the UK. The country continually finds ways to accept and launder dirty money, offer thieves not just citizenship, but honors, and racks up gigantic financial gains while aiding them to become established, if not sainted. And because everything financial is hidden, the government benefits not at all. Everything goes to the boys in The City. This is not good government.
Bullough has a very economic style. Here's how summarizes what I just explained: "It operates as a gigantic loophole, undercutting other countries’ rules, massaging down tax rates, neutering regulations, laundering foreign criminals’ money. It’s not just that Britain isn’t investigating the crooks; it’s helping them, too."
It starts hundreds of years ago, when Scotland allowed the formation of limited partnerships, feudal firms that never had to reveal ownership, activities or pay taxes. Today, numerous firms continue to pop up in Scotland, using the same short list of addresses - private homes where the occupants set up these companies all day long. Panama is just a spruced-up copy of what the UK invented.
The corruption ramps up throughout British history. Whole chapters of the book are devoted the Suez Canal zone, the BVI, Gibraltar and Scotland. Gibraltar doesn’t get much press any more, but what happened there is textbook government caving to finance. Gambling was determined to be the savior of the tiny and artificial economy of this peninsula on a rock, no bigger than a large park. Casinos and lotteries were the names of the games, and as more and more laws were relaxed or nullified, more gambling entities moved there to escape regulation and taxation. In the race to the bottom, Gibraltar kept slashing its tax rates for gambling revenues. They ultimately dropped to 1%, undercutting even the mother country. Now with the internet, online gambling, horrifically fixed so the customer can never win, and lotteries from all over, base themselves in Gibraltar. The money of the world flows directly to them, unimpeded by bureaucracy, regulation or financial restrictions. The amount of money draining from the poor of England alone is stunning. Thousands of pounds per person per year. And the British government? Just watching. Ironically, the government has had to complain; it loses not only the cash everyone wastes on lotteries, but the companies have moved away so they can’t be taxed, either. This is the model of what Britain has given to the world.
The lessons were learned in the British Virgin Islands, where it dawned on some lawyers that they could make a decent living setting up shell companies for the rich overseas. It festooned to its logical conclusion in the Cayman Islands, which has been built entirely on shell companies to hide the fortunes of the corrupt elected, dictators, rich executives and of course every kind of criminal imaginable. An American financial lawyer found the BVI law firm (before the internet, when research was nearly impossible and telephoning was absurdly expensive) and told them what he wanted to set up. So they did. He even wrote the laws for island governments to adopt.
The money their customers stole has simply gone missing from the country of origin, denying everyone there all kinds of services. Bullough uses the example of dirt poor Moldova, where a billion dollars disappeared into shell companies in Scotland. For the less than a million poor Moldovans, a billion dollars is gigantic, and will not be made up any time soon. The result is decaying infrastructure and little or no services. Moldova, like so many other countries, was not poor; it was ripped off. Worldwide, estimates for money stashed in shell companies is between 12 and 20 trillion dollars.
Another example comes from today’s news, where Russian troops invading Ukraine find themselves poorly armed and without food, so that they have to scavenge. The reason? The huge buildup in the military budget went into shell companies for top generals and politicians, who all seem to have gigantic yachts in Cypress (another British colony that learned well), while draftees sent to Ukraine have to deal with food rations that expired (stale-dated) in 2015. Vladimir Putin’s skimming is estimated to be as high as a hundred billion US dollars. One of his accounts was discovered in the Panama Papers, where a modest cellist from St. Petersburg was the named owner of a shell company with a billion US dollars in it. Turns out he was a neighbor and friend of Putin’s when they were both just starting out. All this money is simply not going to what it was collected for. This is why Bullough can say countries like the Caymans, the BVI and most of all the UK are busy exporting poverty and suffering, by importing and investing the ill-gotten gains of criminals.
There is a chapter on the considerable lengths the British government has gone to ensure nothing changes. There have been cases where members of Parliament have (naively) thought they could introduce bills to regulate this known and obvious criminal activity. The latest is an MP by the name of Roger Mullin:
“Unbeknownst to Mullin and indeed to pretty much everyone else, the Treasury and the private equity industry were actually seeking to loosen those same regulations, so limited partnerships would have to report even less information to the authorities than they already did. They had no interest in whether Eastern European money launderers could or could not do business, but they did want investments to be even more profitable than they already were. Remember how the Bank of England doomed controls on international money flows in the 1950s? The Treasury was doing exactly the same thing now.
“And the Treasury had a great advantage in this battle, thanks to a little-known provision in parliamentary rules called a legislative reform order. To get tighter restrictions on SLPs, Mullin needed to pass an actual law,” while loosening the rules only required a simple order to do so.
The great butlering innovation of British finance is called the Eurodollar. Created in the 1950s, 50 years before the euro currency came into being, it is simply a way for bankers to avoid acknowledging the color of cash. If dollars are tracked, they can call it a Eurodollar deal and the authorities have no say. It works the other way just as well. Bullough compares it to light: it can be a wave or a particle, depending on whatever works at the moment. Eurodollar trading allows vast pools of money to transit all over the world, instantly, and the taxman can’t touch them, no matter where they land – or they just change labels and move on again. Here too, there is no direct benefit to the government of the UK, but it keeps The City humming, and those are the people in power.
Bullough has a delightful chapter on the people running the Bank of England and the financial companies. Their old boy network is a strictly closed club, where those inside call each other by first names, and they signify an outsider (from a different school, or God forbid, a university, or worse - Jewish) by addressing them by last name only, even in official communications. They operate on gut feelings and the need to keep the money pumping. Who they hurt, including the whole country, is of no concern. They are money men, and their lives are to keep it coming in. Law is a distraction to be minimized or eliminated.
As early as 1907, records show debates in London using the excuse that Britain would simply lose money if other jurisdictions taxed less than London did, and that there was no point in tightening laws until other countries did so as well. This twin excuse has succeeded everywhere, all over the world, every time the issue comes up. The result is this totally amoral race - to the bottom. And the UK is pretty much there now.
Today, regulators that have had their budgets continually slashed are swamped with reports from banks about suspicious accounts and transactions, but they don’t even have the staff to read them all. So the vast majority of the filings don’t ever get read, just filed, and only a sliver (.04%) have penalties imposed. Because of this, 98.5% of cases never even get reported. In other words, the UK offers all but zero chance being caught.
There are 26 responsible financial agencies in the UK, all overstretched, underfunded, and incapable of carrying out their mandates. It has come to the point where if you are rich enough, you can bring a criminal case yourself in England, because the police can’t afford it. Con artists have gone to prison and had all their assets seized from these private prosecutions. This is just as wrong.
In one galling story, an accountant from Azerbaijan was ripped off by a Russian con artist in England. It was a phony bank branch in a gleaming office tower in Hong Kong, as elaborate as anything in the film The Sting. He got some degree of justice, but the courts were astonishingly more worried about reputational damage to the profession than meting out justice. As Bullough tells it:
“The SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority) fined him (the con man) £45,000, which is better than nothing, but the ruling revealed that its primary concern was whether Sharif (the victim) had damaged the reputation of his profession and made no mention at all of the damage that money laundering does to the victims of corruption in Azerbaijan. It took comfort from the fact that ‘no client had suffered loss as a result’ of Sharif’s conduct, which is particularly perverse because the whole point of filing a suspicious activity report is to allow the authorities to confiscate criminal wealth.” This is a stunning condemnation all by itself.
In sum, “Britain has essentially outsourced responsibility for stopping money laundering to the money launderers, and is failing to stop dirty money as a result. Much of the time the same bodies tasked with regulating professionals’ financial transactions are also charged with lobbying government on their behalf, while also relying on those same professionals’ membership fees to keep solvent.” It is business as usual in the UK.
This is Bullough's beat. He writes about it in numerous publications. He is even a guide on the London Kleptocracy Tours, where instead of Hollywood film stars' homes, the tours drift past the mansions and flats of the world's biggest thieves. These are civil servants like Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov, who can somehow afford to give his 21 year old daughter (he is a bigamist with at least two families) her first apartment, a four million pound flat in the fashionable west end. Meanwhile the Chancellor of the Exchequer has moved out of his Downing Street flat after it was discovered his wife considers herself non-domiciled in Britain so that she pays no taxes on the IT fortune she inherited in her native India. Instead, they have moved back to their luxury accommodations all the way over in Kensington, a couple of miles west. Her husband, Rishi Sunak, has called for an investigation, not of his wife’s dodgy finances, but how the world found out about them. The list is endless.
I realized when I reviewed Bullough’s previous book, Moneyland, that this was the person everyone needs to explain financial shenanigans. Here, with Butler to the World, he proves it firmly again. The book is not just shocking, but often laughably so. It is as entertaining as it is informative.
The UK may be a butler to criminals, but it is a farcical one. Jeeves would probably take offense.
David Wineberg
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April 27, 2022
Exploring the way in which Britain services oligarchs, builds tax havens and launders money, Oliver Bullough presents a startling, if sometimes overdramatic, picture of current policy on economic crime.
This is a polemic, let's get that out the way to start. It takes a strong anti-UK Government stance, going back to 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and almost constantly portraying the government as inept, corrupt and servile. I get the feeling the latter adjective is the one which might stir up the most St. George's Cross rage. Bullough takes his approach so strongly that even I found it over the top at times. The trouble is that if you are constantly finding ways to call out government over the span of 70 years, you begin to get the feeling as a reader that you are purposefully not being given the full picture. And you aren't. This is not a comprehensive book, it does not cover every part of financial and economic crime, nor does it offer much evaluation. Instead, Bullough cracks wise, points in horror and recounts shocking stories.
There is nothing wrong with this per se, but personally I would have preferred a more evaluative or analytical approach. This is a serious topic, in demand of more attention, in the same vein as legal access and harmful identity politics. Authors like Bullough, such as The Secret Barrister or David Baddiel, serve an important purpose for broaching these topics but rarely do they offer something particularly profound. People looking for the worst will find it here, their bias will be satiated, they will huff, and move on. Admittedly, this is a broader, more cynical, criticism of this type of book rather than the book itself.
On that note, this is great. Bullough argues well and with a lot of wit. It's nice to read a book on financial crime which works so hard to keep the reader's attention. A similar thing happened in the 2000's with Climate Change literature and hopefully this will spark wider discussions on Britain's abhorrent record of servicing financial crime. The first few chapters cover a good bit of pop history, interweaving personal stories and grander historical trends. Of particular interest were the chapters covering the British Virgin Isles and Gibralter, respectively.
There's a certain amount of 'gotcha' journalism, but it's never quite as cringe inducing as it can be. A really great chapter comes about through Bullough's investigation into Scottish Limited Partnerships, which is eye opening and does a good job maintaining the reader's attention. Unfortunately the final few chapters, with the exception of the one on money laundering, do feel a little slow. Bullough seems to run out of steam, and a particularly punishingly long chapter took me ages to get through.
Overall, I do really hope this reaches a wide audience. It's new, so there's a chance the paperback will be released in time to fit in someone's stocking. Just go in expecting a solid overview, and you'll be pleased, I think.
This is a polemic, let's get that out the way to start. It takes a strong anti-UK Government stance, going back to 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and almost constantly portraying the government as inept, corrupt and servile. I get the feeling the latter adjective is the one which might stir up the most St. George's Cross rage. Bullough takes his approach so strongly that even I found it over the top at times. The trouble is that if you are constantly finding ways to call out government over the span of 70 years, you begin to get the feeling as a reader that you are purposefully not being given the full picture. And you aren't. This is not a comprehensive book, it does not cover every part of financial and economic crime, nor does it offer much evaluation. Instead, Bullough cracks wise, points in horror and recounts shocking stories.
There is nothing wrong with this per se, but personally I would have preferred a more evaluative or analytical approach. This is a serious topic, in demand of more attention, in the same vein as legal access and harmful identity politics. Authors like Bullough, such as The Secret Barrister or David Baddiel, serve an important purpose for broaching these topics but rarely do they offer something particularly profound. People looking for the worst will find it here, their bias will be satiated, they will huff, and move on. Admittedly, this is a broader, more cynical, criticism of this type of book rather than the book itself.
On that note, this is great. Bullough argues well and with a lot of wit. It's nice to read a book on financial crime which works so hard to keep the reader's attention. A similar thing happened in the 2000's with Climate Change literature and hopefully this will spark wider discussions on Britain's abhorrent record of servicing financial crime. The first few chapters cover a good bit of pop history, interweaving personal stories and grander historical trends. Of particular interest were the chapters covering the British Virgin Isles and Gibralter, respectively.
There's a certain amount of 'gotcha' journalism, but it's never quite as cringe inducing as it can be. A really great chapter comes about through Bullough's investigation into Scottish Limited Partnerships, which is eye opening and does a good job maintaining the reader's attention. Unfortunately the final few chapters, with the exception of the one on money laundering, do feel a little slow. Bullough seems to run out of steam, and a particularly punishingly long chapter took me ages to get through.
Overall, I do really hope this reaches a wide audience. It's new, so there's a chance the paperback will be released in time to fit in someone's stocking. Just go in expecting a solid overview, and you'll be pleased, I think.
February 22, 2023
Druga połowa jest w moim przekonaniu lepsza, ale ile się męczyłam, żeby do niej dotrzeć...
March 12, 2022
I’ve enjoyed this. Certainly not as much as Moneyland from same author but fantastic nonetheless. Book pretty much just walks people through the development of the process of sheltering dirty money in the west throughout chapters on Suez, British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Scotland etc, all through the colourful but still detail oriented anecdotes from people who helped or fought the entrenchment of dirty money in Britain. All the more relevant with events unfolding in Ukraine as some of that money has been financing Russian tanks. One massive Jeeves and Wooster analysis running throughout the book though and I found that allusion bit repetitive.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
October 18, 2022
In the first half of 2022 a huge amount of media conversation was being dedicated to how deeply influential Russian oligarchs had become in Britain, largely as a consequence of Putin's February invasion of the Ukraine. Bullough's book couldn't be more timely.
Bit by bit Butler to the World documents Britains further descent from a morally bankrupt empire to a morally bankrupt servant to the world's super rich, irrespective of how they came by their ill gotten gains.
Little of this will come as a huge surprise to anybody who has been paying attention, but the detail and genesis reads like a detective novel with an especially long time frame.
Bit by bit Butler to the World documents Britains further descent from a morally bankrupt empire to a morally bankrupt servant to the world's super rich, irrespective of how they came by their ill gotten gains.
Little of this will come as a huge surprise to anybody who has been paying attention, but the detail and genesis reads like a detective novel with an especially long time frame.
July 25, 2022
This book explains a lot about Britain -- and why so many oligarchs end up there. It's an important book that helps explain the current situation, and the title is great but unfortunately -- it's boring. There I've said it. I know that nonfiction can be interesting, but this reads like a consultant's report.
April 10, 2023
Dawno już nie czytałam tak nudnej książki na tak interesujący temat
March 16, 2023
Tak, ta książka otwiera oczy! To była dla mnie o tyle interesująca lektura, że od kilkunastu lat związana jestem z Wielką Brytanią.
To głęboko przygnębiająca analiza historii gospodarczej Wielkiej Brytanii, która stręczy się najbrudniejszymi pieniędzmi świata. Od kryzysu sueskiego w 1956 roku do czasów współczesnych.
Olivier Bullough nazywa Wielką Brytanię- Kamerdynerem Świata. Porównuje zachowanie Wielkiej Brytanii, a przynajmniej jej polityków i lobbistów do lokaja Jeevesa Bertiego Woostera z opowiadań P.G. Wodehousa. I o ile te opowieści mogą śmieszyć, to patrząc z innej perspektywy Jeeves jest postacią mocno wątpliwą moralnie. Inteligentny, wykształcony i elegancki, ale jako kamerdyner nie ma żadnych skrupułów przed podważaniem wymiaru sprawiedliwości. Przekupstwo, szantaż i przemoc na usługach swego bogatego pana. I wszystko to oczywiście dla pieniędzy.
Wielką Brytania straciła imperium, ale odnalazła się w innej roli, amoralnego sługi bogactwa.
Kamerdyner pracuje nie tylko dla przestępców, ale dla każdego, kto jest wystarczająco bogaty, by móc skorzystać z jego usług. Jego usługi są atrakcyjne dla uchylających się od płacenia podatków, ukrywających swoje miliardy, dla kumpli najgorszych dyktatorów świata, oligarchów, kleptokratów i kombinatorów.
Raje podatkowe takie jak Brytyjskie Wyspy Dziewicze, Kajmany, Gibraltar pozwala grabieżcom, multimilionerom i globalnym korporacjom unikać płacenia podatków i na pranie brudnych pieniędzy. Istnienie firm, które ułatwiają przestępcom wykonywanie ich brudnej roboty, takie jak szkockie spółki z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością.
Rozkwit hazardu i Gibraltar, który stał się bezpiecznym portem dla bezlitosnych spółek hazardowych żerujących na ludziach.
Znałam tu osoby , które mając dobre życie; dom, rodzinę, pracę straciły wszystko przez uzależnienie od hazardu. Na początku było fajnie, łatwy przypływ gotówki, zagraniczne wycieczki, życie ponad stan, a potem wielki upadek i strata wszystkiego. Dlatego wątek Gibraltarski wstrząsnął mną najbardziej.
Prawda jest taka, że grupka uprzywilejowanych Anglików ma nas w garści, a organy ścigania zwalczające korupcję mają niedostatek zasobów - to walka z wiatrakami.
Łączę ze sobą fakty, układam puzzle i daleko szukać nie trzeba. Wystarczy cofnąć się do początku roku (styczeń 2023) i głośnego skandalu w brytyjskim rządzie. Chodzi o skandal podatkowy z Nadhimem Zahawim, przewodniczącym Partii Konserwatywnej i ministra bez teki, który chciał sobie oszukać brytyjski fiskus. To jeden z najbogatszych polityków zasiadający w Izbie Gmin, m.in. zajmował stanowisko ministra edukacji i pełnił funkcję kanclerza skarbu.
Jak się dorobił fortuny i gdzie była zarejestrowana jego firma z łatwością można sobie wyszukać, jeśli kogoś to interesuje. Zwlekanie z podjęciem decyzji w sprawie Zahawiego też daje do myślenia.
Temat, szeroki, niewyczerpalny, a to tylko namiastka rzeczywistości w której przyszło nam żyć. Wielka Brytania - amoralny najemnik ukrywający prawdziwą naturę za fasadą urokliwej tradycji, literackich nawiązań, nieskazitelnej garderoby i wyniosłych manier.
"Kamerdyner świata - jak Wielka Brytania wstąpiła na służbę u oligarchów, kleptokratów i kombinatorów " to lektura obowiązkowa dla wszystkich zainteresowanych tematem. Polecam.
To głęboko przygnębiająca analiza historii gospodarczej Wielkiej Brytanii, która stręczy się najbrudniejszymi pieniędzmi świata. Od kryzysu sueskiego w 1956 roku do czasów współczesnych.
Olivier Bullough nazywa Wielką Brytanię- Kamerdynerem Świata. Porównuje zachowanie Wielkiej Brytanii, a przynajmniej jej polityków i lobbistów do lokaja Jeevesa Bertiego Woostera z opowiadań P.G. Wodehousa. I o ile te opowieści mogą śmieszyć, to patrząc z innej perspektywy Jeeves jest postacią mocno wątpliwą moralnie. Inteligentny, wykształcony i elegancki, ale jako kamerdyner nie ma żadnych skrupułów przed podważaniem wymiaru sprawiedliwości. Przekupstwo, szantaż i przemoc na usługach swego bogatego pana. I wszystko to oczywiście dla pieniędzy.
Wielką Brytania straciła imperium, ale odnalazła się w innej roli, amoralnego sługi bogactwa.
Kamerdyner pracuje nie tylko dla przestępców, ale dla każdego, kto jest wystarczająco bogaty, by móc skorzystać z jego usług. Jego usługi są atrakcyjne dla uchylających się od płacenia podatków, ukrywających swoje miliardy, dla kumpli najgorszych dyktatorów świata, oligarchów, kleptokratów i kombinatorów.
Raje podatkowe takie jak Brytyjskie Wyspy Dziewicze, Kajmany, Gibraltar pozwala grabieżcom, multimilionerom i globalnym korporacjom unikać płacenia podatków i na pranie brudnych pieniędzy. Istnienie firm, które ułatwiają przestępcom wykonywanie ich brudnej roboty, takie jak szkockie spółki z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością.
Rozkwit hazardu i Gibraltar, który stał się bezpiecznym portem dla bezlitosnych spółek hazardowych żerujących na ludziach.
Znałam tu osoby , które mając dobre życie; dom, rodzinę, pracę straciły wszystko przez uzależnienie od hazardu. Na początku było fajnie, łatwy przypływ gotówki, zagraniczne wycieczki, życie ponad stan, a potem wielki upadek i strata wszystkiego. Dlatego wątek Gibraltarski wstrząsnął mną najbardziej.
Prawda jest taka, że grupka uprzywilejowanych Anglików ma nas w garści, a organy ścigania zwalczające korupcję mają niedostatek zasobów - to walka z wiatrakami.
Łączę ze sobą fakty, układam puzzle i daleko szukać nie trzeba. Wystarczy cofnąć się do początku roku (styczeń 2023) i głośnego skandalu w brytyjskim rządzie. Chodzi o skandal podatkowy z Nadhimem Zahawim, przewodniczącym Partii Konserwatywnej i ministra bez teki, który chciał sobie oszukać brytyjski fiskus. To jeden z najbogatszych polityków zasiadający w Izbie Gmin, m.in. zajmował stanowisko ministra edukacji i pełnił funkcję kanclerza skarbu.
Jak się dorobił fortuny i gdzie była zarejestrowana jego firma z łatwością można sobie wyszukać, jeśli kogoś to interesuje. Zwlekanie z podjęciem decyzji w sprawie Zahawiego też daje do myślenia.
Temat, szeroki, niewyczerpalny, a to tylko namiastka rzeczywistości w której przyszło nam żyć. Wielka Brytania - amoralny najemnik ukrywający prawdziwą naturę za fasadą urokliwej tradycji, literackich nawiązań, nieskazitelnej garderoby i wyniosłych manier.
"Kamerdyner świata - jak Wielka Brytania wstąpiła na służbę u oligarchów, kleptokratów i kombinatorów " to lektura obowiązkowa dla wszystkich zainteresowanych tematem. Polecam.
February 23, 2023
Subtitled ‘How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals’, the author’s view of the UK’s approach over the decades can probably be summed up as ‘Take the money and look the other way’. Using the analogy of the way a butler solves problems for his master by fair means or foul regardless of the consequences for others – as P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves does for Bertie Wooster – the author presents a series of case studies showing how Britain has facilitated the use of tax havens, complex financial structures and tax loopholes to allow shady individuals to squirrel money away. In other words, how Britain, including its overseas territories, has become a ‘butler to the world’ and how successive governments have been good on rhetoric but poor on action when it comes to tackling global financial corruption.
He identifies the start of this as the Suez Crisis in the 1950s which was, he argues, a sign of Britain’s waning influence in the world. Added to this was the loss of income following the independence of its former colonies. As he observes, ‘The banker to the world transformed into a pauper; the global currency limping from one crisis to the next’. It was necessary to replace the lost revenues and a small circle of people within the City of London’s financial instititions came up with ways to do it that took advantage of a regulatory regime which pretty much relied on ‘chaps doing the right thing’. Except it turns out they didn’t. Instead they looked for any way they could to keep money from around the world flowing into their coffers and stop anyone else finding out about it, especially the taxman, their defence being ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will’. It’s the same instinct that still drives those on the political right to call for less deregulation not more.
The author is clearly an expert on his subject but I confess that some of the detail in a few of the case studies, especially those involving arcane financial products and obscure company structures, went rather over my head. The chapters I found most absorbing were ‘Rock Solid’ which describes how Gibraltar became rich by establishing itself as the online gambling centre of the world and ‘Down the Tubes’ in which the author explains how a Ukranian tycoon with possible links to the world’s most notorious mobster managed to manoeuvre his way into the heart of the British establishment, including being sold one of London Underground’s ‘ghost stations’ by the Ministry of Defence.
In the chapter ‘Giving Evidence’, the author describes the UK’s woeful record on tackling money laundering, leaving him to conclude that what measures are in place are designed to give the impression of extreme activity while actually doing nothing.
The new paperback edition has an introduction written after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in which the author scathingly describes Britain’s then prime minister Boris Johnson as ‘a butler’s butler: a politician who had suppressed a report into Russian interference in UK politics; who had welcomed billionaires to London; whose government had established a special “VIP lane” for well-connected individuals to use when selling goods to the government during the pandemic; who had merrily befriended oligarchs; and who had, before becoming prime minister, earned a six-figure sum writing a column for a newspaper owned by tycoons who owned their own tax haven’. Ouch. The author concludes change is unlikely to come from politicians or civil servants, which means it’s up to us. Reading a book like this is perhaps a good start.
Butler to the World is an impeccably researched, no holds barred exposé of the way Britain has become, in the author’s words, a global enabler of skulduggery. It left me feeling simultaneously informed and appalled but unfortunately not entirely surprised.
He identifies the start of this as the Suez Crisis in the 1950s which was, he argues, a sign of Britain’s waning influence in the world. Added to this was the loss of income following the independence of its former colonies. As he observes, ‘The banker to the world transformed into a pauper; the global currency limping from one crisis to the next’. It was necessary to replace the lost revenues and a small circle of people within the City of London’s financial instititions came up with ways to do it that took advantage of a regulatory regime which pretty much relied on ‘chaps doing the right thing’. Except it turns out they didn’t. Instead they looked for any way they could to keep money from around the world flowing into their coffers and stop anyone else finding out about it, especially the taxman, their defence being ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will’. It’s the same instinct that still drives those on the political right to call for less deregulation not more.
The author is clearly an expert on his subject but I confess that some of the detail in a few of the case studies, especially those involving arcane financial products and obscure company structures, went rather over my head. The chapters I found most absorbing were ‘Rock Solid’ which describes how Gibraltar became rich by establishing itself as the online gambling centre of the world and ‘Down the Tubes’ in which the author explains how a Ukranian tycoon with possible links to the world’s most notorious mobster managed to manoeuvre his way into the heart of the British establishment, including being sold one of London Underground’s ‘ghost stations’ by the Ministry of Defence.
In the chapter ‘Giving Evidence’, the author describes the UK’s woeful record on tackling money laundering, leaving him to conclude that what measures are in place are designed to give the impression of extreme activity while actually doing nothing.
The new paperback edition has an introduction written after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in which the author scathingly describes Britain’s then prime minister Boris Johnson as ‘a butler’s butler: a politician who had suppressed a report into Russian interference in UK politics; who had welcomed billionaires to London; whose government had established a special “VIP lane” for well-connected individuals to use when selling goods to the government during the pandemic; who had merrily befriended oligarchs; and who had, before becoming prime minister, earned a six-figure sum writing a column for a newspaper owned by tycoons who owned their own tax haven’. Ouch. The author concludes change is unlikely to come from politicians or civil servants, which means it’s up to us. Reading a book like this is perhaps a good start.
Butler to the World is an impeccably researched, no holds barred exposé of the way Britain has become, in the author’s words, a global enabler of skulduggery. It left me feeling simultaneously informed and appalled but unfortunately not entirely surprised.
March 30, 2023
BTTW explores five different ways that Britain, since the 1950s, has innovated in and promoted either international money laundering or business with large negative externalities. In rough order they are: the Eurodollar, offshore shell companies, gambling, the Scottish limited partnership, and individual oligarchs buying influence in London.
I found the author’s tone throughout insufferably priggish, e.g. ~‘all innovations in finance are just to rob people’ and the book as a whole is a one-sided diatribe against the British government. Nevertheless, it had some interesting discussions and history. For example, I wasn’t aware of the Eurodollar or its role in possibly ending the Bretton-Woods agreement (not sure this is necessarily a bad thing like the author suggests…), the recent history of Gibraltar and the BVI, or the 2009 Russia-Ukraine gas dispute.
I am surprised non-domicile status didn’t come up as a reason for oligarchs settling in London, since I think the UK is the only country in the world with this setup.
I found the author’s tone throughout insufferably priggish, e.g. ~‘all innovations in finance are just to rob people’ and the book as a whole is a one-sided diatribe against the British government. Nevertheless, it had some interesting discussions and history. For example, I wasn’t aware of the Eurodollar or its role in possibly ending the Bretton-Woods agreement (not sure this is necessarily a bad thing like the author suggests…), the recent history of Gibraltar and the BVI, or the 2009 Russia-Ukraine gas dispute.
I am surprised non-domicile status didn’t come up as a reason for oligarchs settling in London, since I think the UK is the only country in the world with this setup.
March 13, 2022
One of those titles, like Fake Law, that should be required reading for every public official, as well as for anyone wanting to understand the state of the nation.
Magisterial.
Magisterial.
September 19, 2022
DNF at chapter 4 cause its just not that interesting and I have a shelf full of books that are possibly. Also I find the repeated references to P.G. Wodehouse grating.
Read
June 18, 2023New role for Britain since losing its empire officially (Suez crisis) is providing financial / offshore services to anyone who will pay them for it.
Independent overseas territories a big part of this - they have autonomy to create tax havens but are linked to Britain to reap other associated benefits (British courts, the perceived security of assets I.e. not being viewed as just some banana republic for those looking to store their wealth). This best of both worlds arrangement is perfect for “buttering”. This is unlike France for example where their ex-colonies are fully fledged and self represented parts of France.
Gibraltar, BVI, Scottish Limited Partnerships, Isle of Man, Eurodollars (created by the City to avoid USD regulation), and so on. All are examples of how Britain has taken to catering to anyone who will pay them. I didn’t know about the Public Prosecution rules in the U.K., mixed views about it personally
British financial law enforcement is woefully underfunded for such a large financial economy. Even some instances where the NCA won’t prosecute as they can’t afford to complete against top law firms. Interesting how America has taken the opposite approach (is financially friendly but will not tolerate abuses, British however will turn a blind eye).
Independent overseas territories a big part of this - they have autonomy to create tax havens but are linked to Britain to reap other associated benefits (British courts, the perceived security of assets I.e. not being viewed as just some banana republic for those looking to store their wealth). This best of both worlds arrangement is perfect for “buttering”. This is unlike France for example where their ex-colonies are fully fledged and self represented parts of France.
Gibraltar, BVI, Scottish Limited Partnerships, Isle of Man, Eurodollars (created by the City to avoid USD regulation), and so on. All are examples of how Britain has taken to catering to anyone who will pay them. I didn’t know about the Public Prosecution rules in the U.K., mixed views about it personally
British financial law enforcement is woefully underfunded for such a large financial economy. Even some instances where the NCA won’t prosecute as they can’t afford to complete against top law firms. Interesting how America has taken the opposite approach (is financially friendly but will not tolerate abuses, British however will turn a blind eye).
April 16, 2023
A shocking expose of Britain’s failure to tackle the dirty money cycling through our system. Offering both a history of British dirty money and exploring the current vulnerabilities in the system, this book demonstrates the utter failure of the government to take action.
Found this quite confusing and technical at times - perhaps more on me than on the author - and didn’t feel it lived up to its potential to discuss oligarchs and their wider role in British life, but definitely learned a lot from this book.
Found this quite confusing and technical at times - perhaps more on me than on the author - and didn’t feel it lived up to its potential to discuss oligarchs and their wider role in British life, but definitely learned a lot from this book.
July 24, 2023
I just couldn't concentrate on this audiobook. There's a lot of business and politics presented in the most possible way. The timeline of the setting is often changing back to the British Empire with multiple colonies. Sometimes it feels like the author is looking for conspiracy theories. I didn't find it interesting enough to continue.
June 9, 2023
I thought this was an incredibly well written book that really showed how involved Britain is in the business of aiding oligarchs and so on, HOWEVER, if anyone from the UK immigration department, specifically the UK citizenship one, is reading this, then I thought this book was all lies and rumours and this is the greatest country of all that does no wrong ever xox
April 13, 2024
Pretty interesting read that I will forget all about in two weeks. I won’t forget ‘skullduggery’ though. What a word! 3.9/5
March 21, 2024
Perhaps one of the worst books I have ever read, and an incredible disappointment. The subject material itself is fascinating, how the UK cultivated an economy around banking to the global elite through a network of post-empire pseudo independent states and the remnants of London’s long banking tradition. Unfortunately the author is unable to present this history without injecting his own highly opinionated statements every other paragraph.
All good historians must present the good, the bad, and the evil of the men and periods of which they write, but Bullough exhausts the reader time and again with his incessant political diatribes. This is the worst sort of historian, one with a political lens through which all is seen. The author appears not only incapable of simply presenting the facts and allowing the reader to come up with his own opinion, but indeed petrified at the idea that readers may synthesize a different interpretation than the author’s own, and so Bullough presents everything through his own biased lens. Not only does this make for an awful read, it also detracts from the author’s capacity to dive into the complexities of what truly is a very obscure portion of global trade and finance.
For anyone interested in this book or subject, I HIGHLY recommend skipping it altogether and instead watching the 1h20m documentary “The Spider’s Web” on YouTube, which provides a much better detailed and refreshingly unbiased explanation of how the UK and the Commonwealth provide financial services to both legitimate and illicit wealthy individuals.
All good historians must present the good, the bad, and the evil of the men and periods of which they write, but Bullough exhausts the reader time and again with his incessant political diatribes. This is the worst sort of historian, one with a political lens through which all is seen. The author appears not only incapable of simply presenting the facts and allowing the reader to come up with his own opinion, but indeed petrified at the idea that readers may synthesize a different interpretation than the author’s own, and so Bullough presents everything through his own biased lens. Not only does this make for an awful read, it also detracts from the author’s capacity to dive into the complexities of what truly is a very obscure portion of global trade and finance.
For anyone interested in this book or subject, I HIGHLY recommend skipping it altogether and instead watching the 1h20m documentary “The Spider’s Web” on YouTube, which provides a much better detailed and refreshingly unbiased explanation of how the UK and the Commonwealth provide financial services to both legitimate and illicit wealthy individuals.
September 1, 2022
Financial fraud is my true crime flavor of choice so naturally this was the book for me. I expected it to be like Dark Money: detailed, well-researched, thorough, ambling, and detailed. Oliver Bullough took a more personal approach to telling this story, probably because he'd already written a book about illicit international finance, and made his research pointed and digestible even on audio. It was a little disheartening, as he claimed in the beginning, to see how little is done about financial crimes despite how much harm it causes its victims. Moneyland will definitely be on my list for the future.
October 18, 2022
Lucid readable prose, and a miserably depressing, if rather predictable outcome. We lose the empire but still insist on being relevant... by being the most amoral facilitators of kleptocracy going. Even the Americans with their love of filthy dollars thought the British practices were too much. I mean it's all so hugely depressing. Suspect as ever if you suspected this already, you'll find it compelling and absorbing. If you don't like anyone saying anything remotely mean about England you'll dismiss it as propaganda, finger-in-your-ear style as seems to be the way anytime anyone even vaguely hints that we're not a remotely remarkable country anymore. Well, I mean we are, but not in the way those ludicrous people living in wish-fulfillment land seem to think
July 10, 2022
The book began promisingly but it became increasingly hard to continue after the first third, because it offered little. I believe a large amount of content can be researched or read online, and lots of the information in this book that the author probably believes will astound its readers - certainly did not astound me and such information are already presumed to be true anyway.
Further, this book’s content is not aligned with its tagline on “how Britain helped” persons A, B, C. I found the book focused more on how terrible the result of helping is, or how bad the respective choices or policies the UK made are.
Further, this book’s content is not aligned with its tagline on “how Britain helped” persons A, B, C. I found the book focused more on how terrible the result of helping is, or how bad the respective choices or policies the UK made are.
February 26, 2023
Kinda wish everyone would read this, has massively influenced my thinking on how Britiain is setup and how far away we are from running the country in a way that is to the benefit of the majority of people who live here. It definitely seemed to nail the underlaying problems of the UK and even the wider world and I am not sure I left feeling particularly optimistic about us resolving them any time soon. This also had some really interesting history as to how we got her and some great focused examples illustrating his points.
March 16, 2022
If you're going to read one book this year, this should be the one. A forensic takedown of Britain's corrupt financial system. Riveting, depressing. Should be required reading for every politician and policy maker.
March 27, 2022
What a fantastic, well researched and horrifying book on the level of corruption that the UK is at the centre of. I just couldn't put this one down even though I had some knowledge of BVI, Gibraltar and all the rest.
The frustration is that nothing will ever change in this country.
The frustration is that nothing will ever change in this country.
March 13, 2022
Riveting, an unexpected page-turner.
August 19, 2023
What first drew my attention to this book was its beginning with descriptions of Britain's acquisition of the Suez Canal and post-WWII period as its Empire collapsed, which are both historical periods I have studied so it was interesting to have another in-depth look at them in this book.
I thought the author's decision to approach the very complex and wide-reaching issue of money laundering and financial crime by zooming in on specific events/territories/individuals (delete as appropriate), was a good one as it allowed for more precision and it stopped his information from being too vague, jumbled and incomprehensible. Also, Bullough avoided making each part isolated and disconnected from each other as he used them all to introduce key, pervasive concepts such as offshore tax havens or the Eurodollar which he keeps coming back to - this adds a key sense of everything being interconnected and unfolding in a sequence because the book was not always very chronological.
I did not give five stars as while I overall felt the level of clarity was strong, I would have appreciated a higher level of explanation of some of the finer economic topics such as how Eurodollars work. But overall, this book was an incredibly strong (albeit depressing) introduction to Britain's role in global money laundering, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in financial crime, offshore tax havens, or Britain's modern economic history. I found the strongest parts to be the criticism (and warning) about private prosecutions, and the chapter about Gibraltar and the gambling industry, and the book is worth reading for them alone.
I thought the author's decision to approach the very complex and wide-reaching issue of money laundering and financial crime by zooming in on specific events/territories/individuals (delete as appropriate), was a good one as it allowed for more precision and it stopped his information from being too vague, jumbled and incomprehensible. Also, Bullough avoided making each part isolated and disconnected from each other as he used them all to introduce key, pervasive concepts such as offshore tax havens or the Eurodollar which he keeps coming back to - this adds a key sense of everything being interconnected and unfolding in a sequence because the book was not always very chronological.
I did not give five stars as while I overall felt the level of clarity was strong, I would have appreciated a higher level of explanation of some of the finer economic topics such as how Eurodollars work. But overall, this book was an incredibly strong (albeit depressing) introduction to Britain's role in global money laundering, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in financial crime, offshore tax havens, or Britain's modern economic history. I found the strongest parts to be the criticism (and warning) about private prosecutions, and the chapter about Gibraltar and the gambling industry, and the book is worth reading for them alone.
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March 11, 2024There are so many books and theories about why the west became the most successful and all types of people have all sorts of ideas. Geography, science blah blah. Here is the reason. The West became what it became because it has no line. No boundaries. It will do anything for profit. Why? Because they have faith. They are made in the image of God. Nothing they do is wrong because Jesus sacrificed himself for them. Everything they do is good just by virtue of them doing it.
Even this writer lists all these things and at the end he is like we abolished slavery we fought the Nazis we can do better. Like how can someone be so naive. Nazis were kids compared to Brits. Brits killed at least 20 times more people in just India than the Nazis killed anywhere.
The west is rotten to the core. No you can't do better. You can do worse and you will. As you lose the power and dominance you will do even worse. We have seen nothing yet
Even this writer lists all these things and at the end he is like we abolished slavery we fought the Nazis we can do better. Like how can someone be so naive. Nazis were kids compared to Brits. Brits killed at least 20 times more people in just India than the Nazis killed anywhere.
The west is rotten to the core. No you can't do better. You can do worse and you will. As you lose the power and dominance you will do even worse. We have seen nothing yet
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