Extra episode: Oliver Bullough on his book ”Butler to the World” - live from the Leaders in Finan...

If America's the policeman to the world, what's Britain? And it struck me it was Butler. It's someone who stands there. They're polite. They're immaculately dressed. They've got all the manners and all the behavior of someone who's a good person, but essentially they do what they're paid to do, and they do it as well as they can.

Unlike theft, the actual discrete act of money laundering is different to that. The victim is removed from it. So there is no one in the room who's incentivized to tell the authorities about it.

Thanks very much for having me on. It's great to be here.

Yeah, I mean, it's a funny question. I had a few friends who accused me back in February of having, you know, cooked up some deal with Vladimir Putin to have him, you know, make oligarchy one of the most important issues in the world just to help me sell my book. I'd like to, you know, deny in the strongest possible terms that all of this was a publicity stunt. It's been an extraordinary year when many of the issues around corruption, kleptocracy that I've been talking about for years have suddenly leapt to political prominence.

And it's quite entertaining in particular thinking about how a year ago or 10 months ago when I was talking to my publishers about how we were going to publicize the book and we were looking for, you know, the stories in the book which would have the greatest resonance to an audience. One of the ones which I felt was particularly interesting was the role of Gibraltar in having spread unregulated or barely regulated gambling all over the world, which is an amazing under-reported story, and that struck us as probably the most sort of scandalous and remarkable insight in the book that has attracted no attention at all, simply because of the change in everyone's debate because of what's happened in Ukraine.

So, you know, if there is a silver lining in the horrible cloud of what's happened in Ukraine to the Ukrainians, it is that there is now far greater awareness in Western countries of the nature of Putin's regime, of the nature of Putin's friends and allies, and also of our complicity, particularly in the UK, of our complicity in having helped him to create that system. So, you know, it's a small silver lining, but at least it's something.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I came up with it. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever said it. It's my attempt to describe Britain's role in the world. And you know, I mean, I've been researching financial crime for a long time, and it is a remarkable thing that almost any scam, pretty much any scam I ever look at, there is always a British role of some kind. It might be that the money ends up in Britain, it might be that a British lawyer is there, it might be that there's a British shell company or a British bank or a British accountant. There's always some form of a UK angle, which from a British perspective is pretty extraordinary.

But the actual name Butler to the World I came up with in conversation with an American academic who'd come to London to look into specifically Chinese money laundering. And he was trying to find people to talk to and he kept asking me which British institutions or British individuals were doing the equivalent of work being done in the US. You know, who's doing the work the equivalent of the Southern District of New York prosecutors? You know, who's doing the work of Homeland Security Investigations or the work of the Department of Justice's kleptocracy unit or whatever. You know, he kept asking me again and again and again and I kept having to tell him that such things don't exist. And it was getting embarrassing.

And so eventually I had to say, look, you know, America, you're the policeman of the world. You do all those things. We don't do them in the UK. And then I wanted to find what, you know, an equivalent to policeman of the world. If America's the policeman of the world, what's Britain? And the vision I had in my head was like a consigliere in a mafia movie. You know, the person who helps the don get away with stuff, who structures the assets, who arranges the business. But obviously consigliere, that's not a British thing. You know, what's the British equivalent? And it struck me it was Butler. It's someone who stands there, they're polite, they're immaculately dressed, you know, they've got all the manners and all the behavior of someone who's a good person, but essentially they do whatever, you know, they're paid to do, and they do it as well as they can. And that seemed to encapsulate Britain's role pretty well. And the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it became. So I thought, well, I'll just use it as a title of the book.

Yeah, I mean, it's a criticism that a few British people have leveled at me over the last few months, partly a bit stung, I think, by my description in the book. And of course there are other countries that are involved in facilitating financial crime whether that's, you know, Swiss banks or, you know, shell companies in the Seychelles or, you know, real estate purchases in Miami or whatever. Obviously this isn't a uniquely British problem but I think where Britain stands alone is in the cluster of corruption services available in London in particular. Everything that is available in bits in different countries is available in one place. You know, there's the banking, there's the investment, there's reputation protection, there's the accountancy, there's lawyers to do your legal deeds, there's the, you know, the art galleries, the high-value dealers to sell you bling, there's real estate, there's schools to educate your children, there's very biddable politicians, there's appallingly bad enforcement of the laws around financial crime, all in one place. And no other jurisdiction in the world has that combination. So that's why Britain is so central to the global criminal economy because it, you know, it is the single node that operates where everything can operate in one place.

Well, I mean, this is, I mean, if you look at money laundering on its own right, just as a discrete crime totally divorced from the origins of the money or where the money ends up, it is a very unusual crime and it only became a crime, you know, in what, in the US in the mid-1980s and then subsequently in other countries into the late 80s and 90s, which, and one of the reasons it became a crime so late is because, like I say, it's essentially separated from the actual crime. The crime is the theft or the embezzlement or the fraud or the corruption and then the laundering of the money is essentially just allowing people to get away with the proceeds of the crime.

So it's a weird crime and if you look at the people involved in it, there's no victim in the actual money laundering bit. The victim is in the predicate offense. So, you know, the banker or the lawyer who moved the money, the person who owns the money who's the thief or the corrupt official, all of these people are essentially happy to keep it quiet. So unlike theft where there's a victim who will go to the police and say I've had stuff stolen or a victim of fraud or a victim of corruption or embezzlement, the actual discrete act of money laundering is different to that because there the victim is removed from it. So there is no one in the room who's incentivized to tell the authorities about it.

And this is one of the reasons it's so hard to do anything about it. And I think one of the reasons that it's seen as, you know, victimless, as a harmless crime and so often not prioritized by governments. And that's something I really try to push against because money laundering is the arterial system, the blood system for global crime. Without money laundering, there would be very little crime because who commits crime? Well, people who want to make a profit. And if you can't keep the money you make, you're not going to commit the crime. And that's what money laundering allows people to do.

So I'm constantly trying to find new ways, arresting ways to explain to policymakers and politicians why we should take money laundering more seriously because right now we're failing catastrophically to tackle money laundering. You know, there is what, 1% of criminal proceeds is identified, a fraction of that 1% is ever recovered. You know, we may as well, I mean, essentially we may as well not be doing anything and that is a really shocking situation to be in.