Accomplice. Enabler. Gang member.

Stolen goods & the proceeds of crime.

Worse than the original offenders by far, are the bastards that would lend their “legitimacy” to the initial criminals & provide “safe harbour” for the thieves spoils & ill-gotten gains.

London, The City, The Square Mile, & it’s contagion of offshore swag islands, are the world’s number one money laundering citadel, effectively making the United Kingdom a “crime state”.

Just ask George Osbourne, the Conservative ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Bulligndon boy” & austerity tsar turned figurehead & impresario to international money laundering & shadow banking.

In one of the largest & most breathtaking acts of unvarnished transnational criminality & blatant high -level corruption in recent history, the cocaine & prostitutes old Buller “intervened” in 2016 whilst chancellor to derail the USA Justice Department from convicting members of HSBC, which had been “found guilty” of laundering millions of dollars for drug dealers, terrorists, sex traffickers, illegal arms traders, people smugglers, fraudsters, child pornographers, & other assorted major organized crime, all on the argument that a prosecution of the guilty party (HSBC) would cause a “global financial disaster”.

Somehow, through some unseen force, Buller George was able to “influence” the DoJ – a justice department of a foreign superpower – decision & dissuade them from prosecuting the guilty criminal cornucopia bank (already with one of the worst reputations for a “legit” commercial bank).

The bank instead paid a record fine of $1.92 billion & issued a public apology before tentatively returning to what they do best.

After such a spectacular derailing of justice on behalf of multivalent & major criminal interests & parties, George Osbourne has ever since been overwhelmed by insanely lucrative & prestigious career opportunities encompassing everything from banking, finance, the arts & “advisor” roles to mega investment firms.

How serendipitous for him.

Oh sorry! Oliver Bullough! The frankly great Oliver Bullough, who has already delivered two magnificent titles, the belting Let Our Fame be Great, & much more relatable to the title under review; Moneyland – Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take it Back.

“In healthcare, as in legal services, banking and so much else, Britain has provided a luxury alternative that the elites of other countries can enjoy while they ruin their own systems, turning them into tools of theft rather than governance.”

“ruin their own systems” … The NHS, not so long ago considered one of the best health services in the world, is rapidly being deliberately destroyed & run down by Conservative fifth columnists saboteurs & flogged off to gangs of predatory foreign vulture capitalists (including the execrable Peter Thiel of Palantir who is being given special favouritism by the corrupt administration).

“However bad other countries are, Britain has for decades been worse. It operates a gigantic loophole, undercutting other countries’ rules, massaging down tax rates, neutering regulations, laundering foreign criminals’ money.”

as usual, Bullough simply smashes it, peeling off the plastic & bunting to reveal an outpouring of the most ardent, abject & absolute corruption-crime-cross-over-concentration-conspiracy & mega larceny super banditry pluto-klepto-abetment.

It is horrific. Just horrific. Just absolutely & completely horrific.

The “respectability” & “first world” posture is prostituted out as “for sale” credence & stench removal for hard-to-the-core trans-global criminality of all categories.

The Conservative Party – fundamentally immoral & unscrupulous, & reliant on “donations” from “donors” – is the perfect, pliant & enthusiastic whore service for foreign criminals to “buy” access/leverage/favouritism/ with a few soiled coins.

“Global Britain” as Liz Truss would call it.

“Britain’s entire system for regulating money laundering is therefore reliant on money launderers blowing the whistle on criminals with no prospect of any personal benefit doing so, and in full knowledge of the fact they’ll face retribution if the criminal finds out. Unsurprisingly, therefore, not many whistles get blown.”

inbuilt inadequacy & intentional inutility.

The solution? It’s really rather simple actually.

It will never ever happen under the Conservatives, who are worse than the criminals they serve & represent.

Close & cauterize all the loopholes, resupply (they have been, very wilfully, massively underfunded & incapacitated) & significantly amplify funding & powers to all regulatory bodies.

Declare “war on money laundering” & devise a series of well funded task forces led by Elliot Spitzer types to aggressively pursue all transgressors, specifically from the laundering side (UK based).

& very importantly, create & introduce a “triple penalty” for the would be launderer, so they do three-fold whatever the sentence is for the crime they are “washing”.

No fines, all jail time, & the confiscation of “all profits” which will be redirected towards funding preventative & investigative operations & some kind of public good application for the areas/victims affected by the specific criminal activity.

Also, from the political angle, any interference, trammelling, obstruction or minimisation to justice or legal process will be met with the most severe sentencing for the meddler, no matter the position.

There will be no urgent call from the treasurer or some other MP to “drop the charges” without the harshest consequences for the bastard that makes the intervention.

That would be a start.

In the meantime, as Oliver Bullough is doing so superbly here, we need to keep a close eye & keen documentation on the flagrant obscenities under the current profound misrule & de facto lawlessness.

Oliver Bullough, 2022, Profile Books, 258 pages