Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World

by Oliver Bullough

This is the first glimpse of the tunnel into Moneyland. It works as follows: first, you obtain money (you might have stolen it, or avoided taxes on it, or simply earned it); then you hide it; then you spend it. Previously, you could take two of the three steps, but never all of them together. You could obtain money, then spend it, but that was risky. Or you could obtain money, then hide it, but that meant it was stuck in Switzerland, and you never got to enjoy it. Moneyland set wealth free, and it didn’t care where that wealth came from: steal, hide, spend, in perpetuity. This is the dirty secret at the heart of eurobonds. It was all made possible by modern communications—the telegram, then the phone, then the telex, then the fax, then the email—and this is the dark side of the revolution of convenience that we call globalization.