Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back by Oliver Bullough (PDF)

Description

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERPRESENTER OF THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES ‘HOW TO STEAL A TRILLION’SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2019SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEARAN ECONOMIST POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS BOOK OF THE YEARA DAILY MAIL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR’You cannot understand power, wealth and poverty without knowing about Moneyland.’Simon Kuper, New Statesman2019: democracy is eating itself, inequality is skyrocketing, the system is breaking apart. Why?Because in 1962, some bankers in London had an idea that changed the world. That idea was called ‘offshore’. It meant that, for the first time, thieves could dream big. They could take everything.Join investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a journey into the hidden world of the new global kleptocrats.See the poor countries where public money is stolen and the rich ones where it is laundered and invested. Watch the crooks at work and at play, and meet their respectable, white-collar enablers. Learn how the new system works and begin to see how we can tackle it.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Moneyland is one the largest economies of the world that almost nobody hears about. Oliver Bullough ranked it recently just behind the American and Chinese economies. However, Moneyland is not a country, but a virtual space made up of offshore structures that represent the dark side of globalization.Moneyland is not about the efficient allocation of money to be expected in a well-functioning capitalist economy. On the contrary, offshore structures allow people to hide their ownership of money, which benefits those with something to be ashamed of. Mr. Bullough subdivides what he calls these offshore bandits into two segments: 1) the tax dodgers (or the naughty people) and 2) the evil people. The end goal of these structures is to gain the greatest degree of protection for that money, no matter how smelly it is. Moneyland continues to prosper because unlike laws, money flows across frontiers.Thanks to the magic of the modern financial system and the anonymity provided by offshore jurisdictions for which money has no smell, offshore bandits are oppressing their subjects without improving either security or prosperity. Unsurprisingly, the casualties of Moneyland are overwhelmingly located in the developing world. Think for example about Nigeria, Ukraine, Malaysia, and Angola. However, Moneyland is also a threat to Western democracies. Mr. Bullough refers for example to terrorism in the West and the interference in the last American presidential election.Moneyland has many enablers besides the modern financial system in the Western world, including in the United States. Think for example about lawyers, consulting firms, lobbyists, PR firms, real estate agents, and the luxury industry in cities such as New York and Miami. These organizations employ many people in both cities. Why should these professionals ask discomforting questions about the origin of their clients’ money beyond what is currently required and losing business to the competition? It is about morality, not about legality, in the absence of any legal mandate about requiring more transparency in conducting these transactions.Furthermore, Mr. Bullough shows clearly how different American states like Nevada aspire to become elite offshore jurisdictions. This type of race to the bottom in the area of transparency makes America hypocritical in insisting on standards overseas that they don’t keep to themselves.To his credit, the author stresses correctly that some people have legitimate reasons to disguise their identity:1) Film starts at risk of being stalked.2) Political refugees pursued by rogue regimes.3) Children with fortune left to them by wealthy parents.What is needed is more international cooperation and transparency. The disclosure of the real owners of offshore structures when conducting certain types of business (above a certain amount) should become mandatory, say in the European Union or the OECD.Finally, Mr. Bullough acknowledges appropriately that the rise of populist leaders like Donald Trump in the United States makes increasing international cooperation and transparency in that area a tough sell for the time being.

⭐Oliver collected his knowledge and research about Moneyland, its players and loopholes and described it all in this magnificent book.How come UK knows nothing about the owner of a penthouse in London city center? How to hide millions from your government or a spouse? It is all very easy, you just need a good lawyer and some money.

⭐Book about how rich people hide and spend their money. The very rich. How differences in laws and policies can be made to an advantage by setting up international financial constructions… if those are things you want to know more about in detail, you are in for a treat.

⭐Historic and contemporary narration on how the tax havens (a.k.a “Moneylands”) became part of global economic dislocators of victim states (mostly developing nations) and negative disruptor of social statuses of their hapless citizens; thus leading to high percentage of global poverty and misery. A wake up call for urgent action to save the world.

⭐Enlightening read in some respects. The fact that some of the issues raised in the earlier chapters had actually been addressed by regulation changes was not apparent until later chapters made this a slightly deflating read.

⭐I was only a quarter of the way through when I left the book at a hotel. But the story being told was so interesting…I bought it again in order to finish the book. What’s better than a good review? Buying the same book twice I guess.

⭐Headline says it all. Over one week late and I have Prime, so I was worried, but it finally arrived. All’s well that ends well.

⭐An interesting review by a brave author. But the technical explanations about the methods used to hide the money are somewhat shallow.

⭐I have acted for these people. What he says is so true and not exaggerated. As he says we need a real change in the system to combat it and bring some fairness to bear. The fundamental change we need is to bring taxes more in line with the spending of the rich. VAT does not need to be regressive if you control it with different rates. Income tax, Inheritance tax and Capital Gains tax are easy pickings for the rich to globally avoid unlike VAT. Even if the British haven territories were brought into line then there would just be more for the others. You have to have higher taxes on the spending of the rich to realistically bring about more equality….anyway brilliant book!

⭐I spent the most amazing,incredble,fantastcal past few days having gone down the rabbit,or should I say rat-hole,into MoneylandI broke my promise of not saying the f & c words maybe one thousand times & ranted at friends & family, or to anyone that would listen. The world is being broken, ripped apart by money, this money is being kept in Moneyland, and Moneyland is getting bigger, the bigger it gets, the closer the world comes to collapsing.Whats at stake if this happens?The health and welfare of our children, the sacrifices of our forefathers and mothers, our very own destiny, all these things are being sold and swapped for condos in Miami and wedding and reception gowns that cost over 200 000 usd.Dictators are siphoning off public wealth and living lives we could only ever read about, because we lack the money to even DREAM about the lives these people bought with the blood of their brethren.The families of corrupt Ministers and Officials walk around stradas and plazas and go shopping in Bentleys as the citizens they stole from die from lack of water and access to basic health care or even vaccines.All this can be stopped, all we have to do is work together, all we have to do is become informed because as Oliver says .’…And iIt will never be easier to confront than it is today’

⭐I purchased this book after reading an excerpt from it on the Guardian. I was not disappointed. Basically, Moneyland sets out to outline the methods by which the growing cadre of the ultra-rich conceal and move their money, the history of how this situation arose, and what may become of it. The author uses extremely evocative and often entertaining descriptions of his own investigations and interviews as well as drawing on a wide body of sources, making this book both highly informative and wonderfully readable. Make no mistake: this book is not a comfortable read, but the author makes the heavy and deeply troubling topic accessible and memorable in a way I really didn’t expect. I only wish he had talked a little more about how Moneyland may eventually be dismantled. I also was surprised that he did not discuss cryptocurrency, but that may have been out of the scope of the book. All in all, I recommend this to anyone troubled by corruption in modern politics, interested in the rise of the billionaires, and anyone who wonders why they should even care about the topic.

⭐The book is lucidly and engagingly written while it is a pleasure to read.As indicated in the review title, Moneyland exploits the fact that money flows unimpededly through different jurisdictions while laws are confined within a single jurisdiction. The basic concept that underpins the whole scheme is the concept of offshore that is of being legally absent while physically present; this idea of an asset being legally outside the jurisdiction that it is physically present in, is absolutely central to the book’s story. Without it Moneyland could not exist.The vehicles through which offshore is effected comprise a variety of shell companies, trusts, secret bank accounts and the like. It is perfectly possible to have a corporation created in a very transparent jurisdiction that will then be nested in a more obscure jurisdiction and so on. The creation of these long, nested chains of corporate structures across multiple jurisdictions is an extremely effective way of hiding both the origin of assets, and their ownership. The people that capitalize an offshore include both First World tax avoiders and Third World Kleptocrats while jurisdictions that host offshore companies include among other, the Caribbean islands.I think it would be interesting to obtain an insight on the level of money that escape and find refuge in offshore companies. In this regard, there are a lot of estimates of how much cash disappears down the tunnel into the Moneyland every year. The International Monetary Fund estimates that between two and five cents out of every dollar earned worldwide is illegal, which could come to as much as $2.6 trillion annually. The analysts from Global Financial Integrity, meanwhile, estimated that the world’s total illicit financial flows in 2013 came to $1.1 trillion, and that total was growing rapidly.I shall conclude the review by pointing to the deleterious effects of Moneyland: worldwide, the cross-border flow of proceeds from criminal activity, including corruption, has been estimated to be as great as $1.6 trillion per year. Corruption often serves as a gateway crime, paving the way for money laundering, transnational organized crime, and in some cases terrorism.The real threat to the liberal order is not the poor immigrants, but unaccountable money. Offshore pirates are looting the world, and this looting is undermining democracy, driving inequality and siphons ever-greater values of wealth into Moneyland, and away from those in need. It imperils development, security, stability, and faith in financial matters. And it profoundly weakens that which is the basis of the desired modern society, the rule of law.

⭐I had just read RISE by G Miller in preparation for Hayonwye. I was just about to start Moneyland when i checked out the reviews on Amazon,. 22 and all with 5 stars. I thought it wouldn’t get that off me following a tough act like RISE. Now that i’ve read it i wish there was a 6 star category. Somebody said sobering and interesting. I think that’s what Fish said about some hurricane years ago.

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