The Conversation: Oliver Bullough

(Tuesday 23rd June 2026)

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Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won

The investigative journalist exposes the dark secrets at the heart of the world economy and explains how few crimes of acquisition would be worthwhile without money laundering and London’s part in it. South American drug cartels, Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders and human and animal traffickers across the globe would not be able to operate without it. The dirty economy has held steady at 2-5% of GDP for decades as efforts to combat it have flopped. Bullough argues that the failure is not for a lack of will but for a lack of insight. Money laundering works and the options to hide money are more secure and impenetrable than they have ever been.

Bullough is author of Moneyland, Butler to the World, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame Be Great. 

Chaired by Peter Florence.