Moneyland is a clarion call for action, but it begins with a history lesson. Following the financial chaos of the 1930s and the turmoil of World War II, the major powers convened in New Hampshire in July 1944 to develop a new international economic architecture. The consensus that emerged from the Bretton Woods Conference was intended to stop uncontrolled asset flows and stabilise domestic markets ‘in perpetuity’, and thereby ‘create a new system of peace and prosperity.’

One strength of Moneyland, deployed at this juncture and elsewhere, is Bullough’s effective use of similes and metaphors to explain complex legal and financial concepts – not dissimilar to the explanatory cutaways in the movie The Big Short. ‘Imagine an oil tanker,’ Bullough says of the international economy. ‘If a tanker has just one huge tank, then the oil that fills it can slosh backwards and forwards in greater waves, until it destabilises the vessel, which overturns and sinks.’ If that was the 1930s economic model, then Bretton Woods saw the design of a new vessel ‘where the oil was divided up between many smaller tanks, one for each country’. The capacity was the same, but the sloshing was localised and could no longer overturn the entire ship. Through currency controls and a gold standard, the global movement of money was kept in check – to transfer assets, ‘you needed permission from the captain’.

The Bretton Woods model did not endure. It began to leak in the 1960s when enterprising bankers developed ‘eurobonds’: listed in London, issued in the Netherlands, paid in Luxembourg, with an Italian borrower, and designed to attract Swiss funds. Bullough explains: ‘The cumulative effect of this game of jurisdictional Twister was that [the bankers] created a highly convenient bond paying a good rate of interest, on which no one had to pay tax of any kind, and which could be turned back into cash anywhere.’ These eurobonds unleashed the phenomenon of the offshore, ‘the idea of an asset being legally outside the jurisdiction that it is physically present in’. This, in turn, gave birth to Moneyland.

History lesson over, the remaining bulk of Bullough’s book is spent on a tour of financial and legal concepts designed to facilitate Moneyland and the jurisdictions that now specialise in them. From the luxury spending habits of the rich to the rise of investment-for-passport schemes, from Russian assassinations to libel tourism, the ground covered by Bullough is formidable without ever feeling overwhelming. He muses at length on shell companies and the specialists who spend their days creating them to help clients evade legal and taxation scrutiny. ‘The more plastic bags you wrap around a dog turd, the harder it is for outsiders to realise what’s inside,’ he writes. ‘And if the last bag says Tiffany & Co. on it, perhaps no one will ever realise it’s full of shit.’

Oliver Bullough (photograph via Twitter)Bullough deftly weaves together conceptual explanations with stories both alarming and ridiculous in equal measure. Take Saudi billionaire Walid al-Juffali, who, in 2012, was on the brink of divorce from his retired supermodel wife, Christina Estrada. Concerned about Estrada’s likely divorce claim in Britain, al-Juffali persuaded Saint Kitts and Nevis to appoint him its ambassador to the London-headquartered International Maritime Organization – despite the fact that he possessed no maritime expertise. When Estrada’s lawyers demanded her share of the family assets, the Saudi businessman invoked his newfound diplomatic immunity. ‘He had found a tunnel into the most secure part of Moneyland yet,’ writes Bullough. Although a British appeal court ultimately found a way to bypass the immunity, al-Juffali’s actions were indicative of the wealthy’s ability to twist laws and governments to their advantage.

While Bullough is critical of the usual offshore suspects – Guernsey, Jersey, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, the British Virgin Islands, Switzerland, Cyprus – he takes particular aim at the United States. In the penultimate chapter, ‘Tax Haven USA’, Bullough explains how America’s efforts to address offshore secrecy have not extended to within its borders. In several parts of the United States, trust structures have become attractive and opaque legal vehicles to store wealth of dubious provenance. In South Dakota, for example, trustees held US$226 billion in assets in 2016, a sevenfold increase from the prior decade. This might require a change in terminology; ‘offshore’ conjures images of idyllic Caribbean islands, not Sioux Falls. ‘If the best tax haven is now the United States,’ says Bullough, ‘we may need a whole new term for the places that adapt their laws to accommodate the needs and whims of the nomadic Moneylanders.’

Moneyland is alarmist without being hyperbolic, depressing without becoming unbearable. Bullough achieves this balance with laugh-aloud humour and insightful personal anecdotes based on the far-ranging travels that underpin this work. Bullough, digs through uncategorised government archives in the Caribbean, stalks millionaires at plush London hotels, and admires luxurious Miami apartments. The breadth of Bullough’s primary and secondary research is impressive, and a helpful note on key sources is provided for those wishing to read further.

If there is one fault with this brilliant book, it is that the final element of its subtitle, ‘And How To Take It Back’, is given only the briefest consideration. Bullough has drawn important attention to a critical threat facing global society, both democracies where institutions are being eroded, and autocracies where populations face deprivation due to quickly offshored corruption. Perhaps, understandably, the author is short on solutions. Even as Bullough advocates for global cooperation, he remains pessimistic: ‘With money flowing freely, it seems impossible that some jurisdiction somewhere won’t undermine any international agreement.

It is tempting to react to this dearth of possible remedies with negativity; tempting to concede that this is ‘just too difficult’ or ‘simply the inevitable result of globalisation’. But Bullough ends with a sobering thought: ‘It will never be easier to confront than it is today.’ Fixing Moneyland in 2019 will be hard. But it is only going to get harder.