Butler to the World

April 15, 2022
A scathing portrait of the U.K. as a kind of ATM, maintained by servile bankers, for the use of nefarious characters around the world. Continuing themes he sounded in Moneyland, Welsh financial journalist Bullough delivers a book that couldn't be timelier given current efforts to impound the expatriated wealth of Russian oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine. His argument is unsparing: that the U.K. "has spent decades not helping America but picking its pocket, undermining its government, and making the world poorer and less safe." The vast financial complex known as the City of London, for example, rivals institutions of Zurich for keeping the ill-gotten gains of "some of the worst people in existence" tucked safely away. London is far from alone. Former outposts of the British Empire such as Gibraltar and Mustique do yeoman--no, butler--service in hiding assets, laundering money, and offering casinos in which to gamble one's fortune away. Seeing all this, Bullough writes, the U.S. long ago "copied Britain's lax regulatory regime" to discourage dollar flight across the Atlantic, but even so, other nations, such as the Netherlands via Cura�ao, "understood the profits to be made from gaming the system" and raised the stakes. Britain responded by further relaxing the rules, which is why places like the British Virgin Islands are now money havens for "North Korean arms smugglers, crooked Afghan officials, American tax dodgers, South American drug cartels, Kremlin insiders, corrupt football administrators and far too many criminals to name." As Bullough writes in this eye-opening account, other U.K. entities seek new ways to serve, from "Scottish limited partnerships" to hidden accounts on Jersey, all of which help disguise money trails. A stinging case for developing a regulatory regime to force the U.K. "to seek a different way to earn a living."

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May 2, 2022
Britain and its overseas territories have spent decades soliciting ill-gained fortunes, according to this impressively detailed and frequently enraging exposé. Journalist Bullough (Moneyland) examines how decolonization in the 1950s left Britain “essentially broke” and in need of foreign investment. He also details how budget cuts in the wake of the 2007–2008 financial crisis led police to stop “showing interest in cases of financial crime... just as the spread of online banking and payments made fraud easier than it had ever been,” and explains that notaries, who handle some property transactions, have been regulated by an obscure office under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury since the reign of Henry VIII. On a tour of Britain’s overseas territories, Bullough notes that officials in Gibraltar turned a blind eye to smuggling when the Royal Navy shuttered local bases in the 1980s and then authorized low-tax offshore betting on the peninsula. Spotlighting the influx of Kremlin-aligned oligarchs into England, Bullough also details how British officials including Prince Philip feted Dmitry Firtash, a “cash-rich” oil executive who funded pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine and bought a disused Tube station in London for £53 million. Lucid explanations of complex financial matters and a simmering sense of outrage distinguish this timely investigation into how Britain sacrificed its principles for pounds.