Stats for nerds
4recommend
7mentions
5people
2021–2023years
86% recommend14% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This will be a significant boost to London, already home to vast amounts of money laundering via real estate, all facilitated by well established networks involving thousands of middle class professionals and the UK's crown dependencies with convenient secrecy laws, nominee directors etc. to conceal beneficial ownership. 70% of the apartments in most premium developments are owned offshore, many with concealed ownership -- 11% of all of the properties in Westminster alone.
I recommend the following books by Oliver Bullough:
Moneyland https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moneyland-Thieves-Crooks-Rule-World...
Butler to the World https://www.amazon.co.uk/Butler-World-Britain-Empire-Found-e...
and, by Tom Burgis
Kleptopia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kleptopia-Dirty-Money-Conquering-Wo...
and this YouTube video
- There’s a really great book called Kleptopia by T. Burgis. It’s about how wealthy oligarchs use the Western legal and banking systems.
He points out that the US financial system is squeaky clean. Oligarchs wind up in prison because they think they can pull the crap in New York that they pull in London.
But outside the financial sector it’s the 100% opposite. Americas permissive corporate transparency lets assets vanish.
The best example: if you want to get a mortgage to buy a house you have submit to a financial strip search. But if you want to buy a house with bags of cash, you don’t even need to give your name.
- Read Kleptopia. It’s written by a British author and mostly about the British financial/legal system.
I’m not sure how much of it is current in light of the sanctions. The big example it uses (90% of the book) is Khazakhstan.
From what I’ve read more recently, many rich/middle class folks in Latin America are moving to the US. If their businesses so much as look at drug money, and then they so much as look at an American bank, they can wind up in a US prison for a long time.
So they just move to America to get away from drug gangs.
The US does not f*ck around with criminal financing.
- I also came to praise Treasure Islands.
Also highly relevant with the Russian invasion in Ukraine ongoing is Kleptopia. The author also battled a defamation lawsuit against him in the UK which was dismissed in March.
- Strongly recommend reading Kelptopeia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World
Covers the current situation in Khazakhstan. One of the most chilling chapters deals with what can happen to protestors in Khazakhstan.
Even more chilling, how the ruling elite manipulate the international press.
If you don’t hate Tony Blair already, this will help you cross that line in a big way.
https://www.amazon.com/Kleptopia-Dirty-Money-Conquering-Worl...
- I read The Economist which every year publishes their list of notable books. That is how I found Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis of The Financial Times. That book describes how the richest people get there (mostly through ill gotten means) and what they do to hide money (lots and lots of real estate)
WaPo review https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-among-the-klept... The Economist review https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/10/08/two-book... (might require login)
Small quote from The Economist that does a wonderful job summarizing why this book is very good:
“Kleptopia” is wonderfully if grimly entertaining, replete with tales of Zimbabwean thugs, late Soviet gangsters and kgb officers-turned-entrepreneurs, as well as a Romeo-and-Juliet romance between the children of rival oligarchs. Mr Burgis’s depiction of the interlocking worlds of post-Soviet business and politics captures the way corruption binds together economic and political power. He meticulously demonstrates how, once overseas money enters Britain (attracted by the protections of its legal system), the associated power struggles and skulduggery follow.
Except it is not just Britain, but also us here in USA - countries that he touches include USA, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Colombia, Congo, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, China and both Koreas.
It was a fast and furious read that made me REALLY angry at times. It does not have a happy ending:
America and Britain, he thinks, are ever-more like Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan: “Like a parasite altering a cell it invades, so kleptocratic power transforms its host.”
Highly recommend as a serious, if depressing read.
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