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

by Oliver Bullough

And then, just days before it was due to be printed and two years of work would pay off, came a highly unwelcome email: “the editor considers the piece, even with legal changes along the lines the lawyer is suggesting, too high a legal risk to publish at the moment.” The words “at the moment” were unnecessary. That email meant the story was dead. I was free, of course, to take it to other publications, and I approached a succession of editors with whom I had previously worked and who I knew would trust the quality of my work. Sadly, however, trying to interest a new editor in a story that has been killed by a lawyer is like trying to interest someone in a dog that has killed its owner. I received a series of polite and sympathetic refusals, until finally I gave up. The story really was dead; the oligarch had got away with it. He and his family had almost no connection to the United Kingdom, yet the simple fear of being sued by them in the British courts led the publication (quite a prestigious one) to jettison a story that revealed how offshore finance and all the Moneyland paraphernalia were neutering Western attempts to impose sanctions