“Don’t Be a Mule!” This is the arresting slogan of an annual Banking & Payments Federation Ireland initiative aimed at students, endorsed by celebrities such as Miriam O’Callaghan. At its relaunch last September, campaigners presented research that suggests almost a third of young Irish adults have received approaches to let dirty money wash through their accounts.
Judging by Oliver Bullough’s rigorous, passionate and thoroughly bleak exposé, this should shock nobody. “There has never been a better time to be a criminal,” the Welsh investigative journalist claims, detailing how easy it is for drug cartels, child abuse imagery and human traffickers to put ill-gotten gains beyond official scrutiny. In short, money laundering benefits “the world’s worst people”, with roughly 2-5 per cent of global GDP now contaminated – and more than 50 years of “legislation, diplomacy, prosecution and compliance have been a complete flop”.
Bullough is already the author of two books about international scams, but Everybody Loves Our Dollars feels like his most wide-ranging analysis yet. It begins with a biographical sketch of Wright Patman, the maverick 20th- century Texas congressman who pioneered anti-fraud laws and publicly asked an American Bankers Association chairman, “Can you give me any reason why you should not be in the penitentiary?”. Other historical references include the Medici family’s creative methods for moving funds around medieval Italy and Chicago gangster Al Capone’s investment in actual laundromats with bootlegging profits.
Like an old-school newshound, Bullough wears out plenty of shoe leather in his search for today’s three-card tricksters. He visits a US Federal Reserve printing press and reveals why an increasingly cashless economy still pumps out the $100 bills that crooks find so handy. He builds case studies around luxury goods outlets in Oxfordshire, shell companies in Riga and a giant casino in Saipan, returning home almost as angry as Roy Keane.
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Most of Bullough’s trips feature interviews with under-resourced law officers, who admit that cryptocurrencies and other new technologies are making their jobs even harder. “There’s an aspect of whack-a-mole to it,” one laments. “Nobody’s allowed to work in my office unless they’ve read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.”
[ How absurd: the world as Albert Camus saw itOpens in new window ]
Bullough writes with a crusader’s zeal and ominous tone that over 284 pages can become a little wearing. As a glimpse into the dark underbelly of global finance, however, his urgent polemic also has real and considerable value.
