10th March, 7:30pm - Oliver Bullough, Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won

Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP

We're excited to welcome Oliver Bullough, best selling author of Moneyland and Butler To The World to Backstory to talk about the huge industry that is money laundering.  

About the book:

Without money laundering, few crimes of acquisition would be worth the trouble. South America's drug cartels would be stuffed without it, as would Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders and a whole bestiary of human (and animal) traffickers the world over. And yet, estimates of the dirty portion of world GDP have held steady at 2%-5% for decades.

All efforts at legislation, diplomacy, prosecution and compliance have been a complete flop. It's not a lack of will to stamp it out. It's a lack of insight.

So join bestselling investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a perspective-altering adventure through the flipside of the global economy. In the criminal world, cash is still king (in fact, crime might now be the main thing cash is good for, and even why it still exists). Barter is pretty good too: vast, continent-wide exchanges of everything from luxury handbags to baby eels support a triangular drug trade linking Europe to the Far East.

Cryptocurrencies flow through paper ledgers that would make a Florentine merchant feel at home. And the system works. Whether you're a fraudster, a cartel boss, a corrupt politician, a kleptocrat or a terrorist mastermind, your options to move and hide your money are more secure and more impenetrable than they have ever been.

There has never been a better time to be a criminal. It's time that changed.

Tickets Available:

Ticket only - £15 (This ticket does not include a copy of the book. You can decide to buy a copy on the night, but this will be charged in addition, at the full price of the book.)

Ticket & book  (RRP £25) - £30 (To collect on the night.)