The Sink : How the Real World Works - Terror, Crime and Dirty Money
About this book
"The Money Sink" tells the how, when and why of criminal and terrorist money laundering, the murky and ultra-secret world where the line between legitimate business and crime vanishes. In 1994, when Jeffrey Robinson, author of "The Laundrymen", first brought to the world's attention the problems of dirty money - revealing how otherwise legitimate lawyers, bankers, accountants and even governments were helping drug traffickers hide the proceeds of their crimes - he labelled money laundering the world's third largest business, estimating that at any given time there was around $300 billion circling the globe, looking to get clean. Now, in the sequel to "The Laundrymen", Robinson calculates that the dirty money business has doubled in less than ten years and is ever more sophisticated (law enforcement and concerned governments flounder in its wake) - and he lays the blame on the offshore world. In an eye-opening piece of investigative journalism, Robinson reveals the state of the art of business-as-crime worldwide. As vast profits are turned into seemingly legitimate money, lawyers, bankers, accountants, brokers and governments have sold out to the mob and terrorists learn the lessons too and use Western financial networks to finance attacks on those same systems.