A shocking, carefully crafted work of non-fiction in which award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis reveals how global kleptocracy is corrupting the world around us.
*****
They are everywhere — thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. They have accumulated more money than most countries. But what they actually steal is power. Until now, we only knew of their existence from what they left behind — a body in a charred Audi, workers shot to death in the Kazakh desert, a rigged election in Zimbabwe, a British banker who was silenced and ridiculed when he tried to reveal the truth about the City of London.
*****
Tom Burgis weaves together four stories revealing a terrifying global web of corruption. A Basingstoke troublemaker who stumbles upon the secrets of a Swiss bank, a billionaire from the former Soviet Union building a private empire, an honest Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and a Brooklyn con artist under the protection of the CIA.
*****
Burgis presents a picture of a world of which we have so far only known fragments. It follows the trail of dirty money flooding the global economy, aiding dictators and infecting democracy. But the roads leading from the Kremlin to Beijing, from Harare to Riyadh and from Paris to the White House show something far more ominous — thieves are banding together. And human losses will be enormous.
*****
Book of the year according to the weekly Economist