Hot Money and the Politics of Debt

Book excerpt: A ball of hot money rolls around the world. It seeks anonymity and political refuge. It dodges taxes and sidesteps currency controls. It rolls through offshore shell companies and secret bank accounts, phoney charities and fraudulent religious foundations. It is kept rolling by white-collar criminals, gun-runners, drug dealers, insurgent groups, scam artists, tax evaders, gold and gem smugglers, and, not least, secret service agents plotting coups and financing revolutions. R.T. Naylor explains the origins of this pool of hot and homeless money, its origins, its uses and abuses, how the world of high finance, corporate and governmental, became hostage to it, and the price the world is paying and will continue to pay until the hostages are released. This book was one of the first, and remains the most comprehensive, to dissect the world of offshore finance, capital flight, money laundering, and tax evasion. Once a subject of concern principally to tax authorities and finance ministries, since the September 11, 2001 hot and homeless money has now become a central preoccupation for police forces and intelligence services around the world.