Moneyland is a bespoke virtual realm accessible only to those who can afford citizenship. It is populated by the world's wealthiest crooks and thieves who are safe from investigation for the rest of their lives, which is why as much as 10 percent of all the wealth in the world is now parked there.
That figure amounts to a trillion dollars, a large proportion of it stolen from government by the government, whose corrupt officials have squandered it on 'stuff' – ranging from fast cars to obscene palaces and priceless works of art officials, all hidden from scrutiny.
Journalist and author Oliver Bullough, whose new book Moneyland is the Sunday Times Business Book of the Year 2018, took us first to Ukraine, his specialist area, where the so-called free healthcare system had gone bankrupt. The coffers were bare, resulting in ordinary people being deprived of life-saving medicines because the funds had been plundered and squandered by, among others, president Viktor Yanukovych, before he was ousted in the 2014 revolution and fled to Russia. Bullough had access to the former leader's extravagant country estate and, as he began tracing back the source of the ill-gained wealth, discovered it was linked to various offshore British companies and finally to Liechtenstein, where the trail went dead.
Through offshore havens and the Eurobond phenomenon, money is continually being syphoned off and diverted into secret ban accounts, amounting to the world's biggest financial scandal today. "Since Britain is implicated, why don't we tackle it?" Bullough challenged. The depressing answer from government is that it would damage the UK economy, and so the gravy train trundles on.
Bullough's colourful, entertaining talk delved into the origin of the phenomenon of 'offshore', into the City of London's role in giving birth to it, and into the damage it is doing. "If we don't start organising to tackle it, to assert some democratic control over unaccountable wealth," he said, " the very future of our civilisation is at stake".
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