Britain’s money laundering scandal goes back a long way

The war in Ukraine has turned a lot of people’s attention to oligarchs in the UK. How did these guys all end up in London, seemingly owning half of Belgravia? In Butler to the World, Oliver Bullough offers an answer.

I read his earlier work Moneyland slack-jawed at the blatant – and mundane – techniques employed to register UK Ltd companies through frontmen and use them to launder money. I thought the middle men would be glamorous and slick, not running a website from an office above a chip shop.

In this work Bullough looks at the bigger picture: the way Britain became the destination of choice for so many who don’t want questions asked about their wealth. He argues that Britain has pursued an attitude of light regulation at the political level, and keen enabling among financial institutions, to allow the world’s oligarchs, despots and mobsters to safely park their cash in London.