The big read

摘要

Moneyland. By Oliver Bullough. Profile Books; 298 pages; £20. To be published in America by St Martin's Press in May; $28.99 Moneyland is the author's term for the virtual country into which the world's mega-rich smuggle their (sometimes ill-gotten) wealth, so insulating it from the attention of tax and other officials. Focused in part on the kleptocrats of the former Soviet Union, the book ranges across the world and a wide cast of lawyers, accountants and mountebanks who see to it that money stolen in poor, ill-run countries can be invested in rich, safe ones. An urgent expose of a vital subject.