Hot Money and the Politics of DebtMcGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 2004 M08 17 - 480 pages 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. |
Contents
| vii | |
| ix | |
Prologue | 11 |
The World According to Meyer Lansky | 17 |
Parables of Peculiar Talents | 75 |
High Finance in Cocaine Country | 163 |
What Gets Washed in the Pacific Basin? | 197 |
What Flies into the Cuckoos Nest? | 229 |
The Grim Reaper | 271 |
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Common terms and phrases
allegedly American Argentina arms assets Banco Ambrosiano bank accounts bankers banking system BCCI Bernie Cornfeld billion Bolivia borrowing British Calvi capital flight cash Cayman Cayman Islands central bank charges clients cocaine Colombia companies corporate coup creditors crisis currency deal debtor countries deficit deposits developing countries dollars domestic drug economic exchange controls export firm flight capital forced foreign debt foreign-exchange French funds global havens Hong Kong hot money important industrial interest rates international banks investment investors Islands Italian Italy Latin America laundering loans Mafia major Marc Rich Marcos Mexican Mexico Michele Sindona military officers offshore banking operations Opus Opus Dei Panama payments peekaboo political real estate regime Roberto Calvi RUMASA scandal secret sector securities Sindona Swiss banks Switzerland takeover tax evasion trade trafficking Vatican Vesco