Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back

By @SimonCocking review of Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back. 

2019: democracy is eating itself, inequality is skyrocketing, the system is breaking apart. Why?

Because in 1962, some bankers in London had an idea that changed the world. That idea was called ‘offshore’. It meant that, for the first time, thieves could dream big. They could take everything.

Join investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into the hidden world of the new global kleptocrats.

See the poor countries where public money is stolen and the rich ones where it is laundered and invested. Watch the crooks at work and at play, and meet their respectable, white-collar enablers. Learn how the new system works and begin to see how we can tackle it.

This is a great book, even if it is also very depressing too. Bullough has produced a valuable piece of investigative journalism to create this book. While the subtitle has a positive message, the rest of the text clearly and clinically outlines how the rich have managed to create a notional place called Moneyland, where they are able to operate outside of the laws of the land for mere, poorer, mortals. Time and time again, across the globe, in each chapter he outlines and describes with systematic analysis, how and why the rich have managed to repeatedly circumvent normal methods of taxation. For those who have utilised the benefits of Nevis, the island in the Caribbean too, it may possibly never be revealed just who bought passports of convenience there, and also ran tax avoidance ventures through their domain.

The book is very readable, with a strong sense of humour and irony, perhaps necessary, when at times it would illicit more depressing feelings. The situation has evolved constantly, often also with the connivance of locations such as London, Miami and other major first world cities too. It is not enough to blame the situation on less developed or ‘Banana Republics’ when clever lawyers in western countries have done so much to make these intricate tax avoidance schemes possible. It is especially ironic when you consider the UK’s current problems with Russia, when so many of it’s oligarchs have found London as the perfect place to route so much of their wealth, legally gotten or otherwise out of Russia and beyond the reach of any taxation authorities.

The book is well researched, accessibly presented and challenging in it’s revelations and insights. The unfortunate question that it raises is whether anything can be done about the situation, especially as it is having real, negative impacts on the rest of society, and also undermining many liberal democracies, to the detriment of us all.

About the author

Oliver Bullough is the author of two non-fiction books about Russian history and politics: The Last Man in Russia (Allen Lane, 2013), which was shortlisted for the Dolman Prize, and Let Our Fame Be Great (Allen Lane, 2010), which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in the UK and won the Cornelius Ryan in the US. His journalism appears regularly in the Guardian, the New York Times and GQ.