What do you think?
Rate this book
Everybody Loves Our Dollars - How Money Laundering Won
From the bestselling author of MONEYLAND and BUTLER TO THE WORLD, a revelatory new anatomy of global money laundering, the crime that makes crime pay
Without money laundering, few crimes of acquisition would be worth the trouble. South America's drug cartels would be stuffed without it, as would Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders and a whole bestiary of human (and animal) traffickers the world over.
And yet, estimates of the dirty portion of world GDP have held steady at 2%-5% for decades. All efforts at legislation, diplomacy, prosecution and compliance have been a complete flop. It's not a lack of will to stamp it out. It's a lack of insight. So join bestselling investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a perspective-altering adventure through the flipside of the global economy.
In the criminal world, cash is still king (in fact, crime might now be the main thing cash is good for, and even why it still exists). Barter is pretty good vast, continent-wide exchanges of everything from luxury handbags to baby eels support a triangular drug trade linking Europe to the Far East. Cryptocurrencies flow through paper ledgers that would make a Florentine merchant feel at home.
And the system works. Whether you're a fraudster, a cartel boss, a corrupt politician, a kleptocrat or a terrorist mastermind, your options to move and hide your money are more secure and more impenetrable than they have ever been. There has never been a better time to be a criminal. It's time that changed.
Without money laundering, few crimes of acquisition would be worth the trouble. South America's drug cartels would be stuffed without it, as would Nigerian kleptocrats, Afghan terrorists, American tax evaders and a whole bestiary of human (and animal) traffickers the world over.
And yet, estimates of the dirty portion of world GDP have held steady at 2%-5% for decades. All efforts at legislation, diplomacy, prosecution and compliance have been a complete flop. It's not a lack of will to stamp it out. It's a lack of insight. So join bestselling investigative journalist Oliver Bullough on a perspective-altering adventure through the flipside of the global economy.
In the criminal world, cash is still king (in fact, crime might now be the main thing cash is good for, and even why it still exists). Barter is pretty good vast, continent-wide exchanges of everything from luxury handbags to baby eels support a triangular drug trade linking Europe to the Far East. Cryptocurrencies flow through paper ledgers that would make a Florentine merchant feel at home.
And the system works. Whether you're a fraudster, a cartel boss, a corrupt politician, a kleptocrat or a terrorist mastermind, your options to move and hide your money are more secure and more impenetrable than they have ever been. There has never been a better time to be a criminal. It's time that changed.
286 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 29, 2026
74 people are currently reading
799 people want to read
About the author
Oliver Bullough
10 books390 followersI moved to Russia in 1999, after growing up in mid-Wales and studying at Oxford University. I had no particular plan, beyond a desire to learn Russian, but got a job at a local magazine and realised I liked finding things out and writing about them.
The next year I moved to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, then joined Reuters news agency, which sent me to Moscow. The first major story I reported on was the Moscow theatre siege of 2002, when a group of Chechens seized a theatre in the capital.
It both horrified and fascinated me, and I resolved to find out as much as I could about Chechnya and the North Caucasus, to try to understand the roots of the conflict that had burst so unexpectedly into my life. I travelled extensively in the mountains that form Russia’s southern border, falling in love with the scenery, the food and above all the warm and welcoming people.
When I left Russia in 2006, I was exhausted by it, however. I had seen too much misery and never wanted to write about Chechnya again. But I had promised to give a talk to a society in London. After the talk, I was asked if I would ever write a book about what I had seen. I wrote down a few thoughts, took them to a friend who knew about books, and she introduced me to a publisher.
I travelled in a dozen countries to meet all the people I needed for the stories I wanted to tell, and wrote them down in Let Our Fame Be Great. Penguin published it in the UK in 2010. It won the Oxfam Emerging Writer Prize and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize, with prize judge James Naughtie calling it “an extraordinary book... a wonderful part-travelogue, part-history”. Basic Books published it in the United States, where the Overseas Press Club awarded it the Cornelius Ryan Award for “best nonfiction book on international affairs”.
After it came out, though, a number of Russian friends objected that I had made the Russians into the villains. I don’t think I did, but their complaints chewed away at me a little. Perhaps some readers had been left feeling all Russians were complicit in the crimes of their leaders. The Russians after all suffered as much as anyone at the hands of the government in Moscow.
That provoked me into writing my second book, The Last Man in Russia, which describes the struggle of a Russian to live in freedom and the efforts of Soviet officials to stop him. The life story of Father Dmitry, the Orthodox priest I chose as my central figure, seems to me to mirror the life of his whole nation, which is beset by depression and alcoholism.
Travelling to meet the people I wanted to talk to and to see the places I wanted to describe took me to the far north of Russia, to rotting gulag towns; to the west of Russia, to half-abandoned villages; and to the Ural Mountains, where the communists locked up their doughtiest opponents; and to Moscow itself, that great fat spider in the centre of its web.
I would like to write more books one day but, at the moment, I’m concentrating on my day job as Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. I also write freelance articles and worry about the Welsh rugby team.
http://www.oliverbullough.com/biograp...
The next year I moved to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, then joined Reuters news agency, which sent me to Moscow. The first major story I reported on was the Moscow theatre siege of 2002, when a group of Chechens seized a theatre in the capital.
It both horrified and fascinated me, and I resolved to find out as much as I could about Chechnya and the North Caucasus, to try to understand the roots of the conflict that had burst so unexpectedly into my life. I travelled extensively in the mountains that form Russia’s southern border, falling in love with the scenery, the food and above all the warm and welcoming people.
When I left Russia in 2006, I was exhausted by it, however. I had seen too much misery and never wanted to write about Chechnya again. But I had promised to give a talk to a society in London. After the talk, I was asked if I would ever write a book about what I had seen. I wrote down a few thoughts, took them to a friend who knew about books, and she introduced me to a publisher.
I travelled in a dozen countries to meet all the people I needed for the stories I wanted to tell, and wrote them down in Let Our Fame Be Great. Penguin published it in the UK in 2010. It won the Oxfam Emerging Writer Prize and was short-listed for the Orwell Prize, with prize judge James Naughtie calling it “an extraordinary book... a wonderful part-travelogue, part-history”. Basic Books published it in the United States, where the Overseas Press Club awarded it the Cornelius Ryan Award for “best nonfiction book on international affairs”.
After it came out, though, a number of Russian friends objected that I had made the Russians into the villains. I don’t think I did, but their complaints chewed away at me a little. Perhaps some readers had been left feeling all Russians were complicit in the crimes of their leaders. The Russians after all suffered as much as anyone at the hands of the government in Moscow.
That provoked me into writing my second book, The Last Man in Russia, which describes the struggle of a Russian to live in freedom and the efforts of Soviet officials to stop him. The life story of Father Dmitry, the Orthodox priest I chose as my central figure, seems to me to mirror the life of his whole nation, which is beset by depression and alcoholism.
Travelling to meet the people I wanted to talk to and to see the places I wanted to describe took me to the far north of Russia, to rotting gulag towns; to the west of Russia, to half-abandoned villages; and to the Ural Mountains, where the communists locked up their doughtiest opponents; and to Moscow itself, that great fat spider in the centre of its web.
I would like to write more books one day but, at the moment, I’m concentrating on my day job as Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. I also write freelance articles and worry about the Welsh rugby team.
http://www.oliverbullough.com/biograp...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
February 15, 2026
A mind boggling exploration of the world of Money Laundering. I knew it was a large part of the world economy, but didn't know just how insanely prevalent it is before reading this. You shake your head in amazement at some of the facts revealed.
For instance, I've often wondered who buys all those Swiss Watches priced at $50,000 or more. Well, Bullough reveals that 80% of the Swiss Watch trade is related to money laundering. You'd worry about getting through airport security with $50k in your hand luggage. But nobody would pay any mind to a watch on your wrist.
Then there is the fact that of all the paper money dollars in circulation, around 80% are in the form of 100 dollar bills. Ordinary people never use these, but they are invaluable for criminals and tax evaders.
You sometimes find yourself grinning at the ingenuity of the criminals until you remember that these techniques facilitate some of the worst crimes in the world.
As well as explaining the problem in all its gruesome reality, Bullough gives some practical suggestions for dealing with it.
For instance, I've often wondered who buys all those Swiss Watches priced at $50,000 or more. Well, Bullough reveals that 80% of the Swiss Watch trade is related to money laundering. You'd worry about getting through airport security with $50k in your hand luggage. But nobody would pay any mind to a watch on your wrist.
Then there is the fact that of all the paper money dollars in circulation, around 80% are in the form of 100 dollar bills. Ordinary people never use these, but they are invaluable for criminals and tax evaders.
You sometimes find yourself grinning at the ingenuity of the criminals until you remember that these techniques facilitate some of the worst crimes in the world.
As well as explaining the problem in all its gruesome reality, Bullough gives some practical suggestions for dealing with it.
March 16, 2026
This should be at the top of everyone’s non-fiction reading list. It’s eye-opening and deeply informative about how our financial systems have enabled money laundering to worsen, while also offering practical solutions that governments should seriously consider.
February 26, 2026
Brillianly written. It's easy to immerse yourself in the story, and learn about how ineffective our governments ( or how complicit) are in money laundering.
April 27, 2026
A masterpiece of journalistic excellence. Entertaining, witty, and truly revelatory. Oliver Bullough decomposes money laundering, exposing the sheer scale of the crime.
The author provides an insightful overview of the history of money laundering, which began after WWI and the Great Depression, when heavy restrictions and capital controls prompted people to devise alternative illegal solutions to avoid those restrictions. It started an ever-accelerating race between criminals and legislators trying to fight against ML. Yet, government efforts have delivered dismal results so far, as ML still accounts to 2-5% of global GDP. Modern anti-ML efforts are led by FATF, the Financial Action Task Force, which was created in a hurry first in 1989, then revised after 9/11, but still isn't optimally designed to tackle the crime.
Oliver Bullough explains numerous ways the ML criminals work and accumulate their wealth. Some observations from the chapters I found particularly interesting:
- AI cannot be used for training as there is no sufficient data on money laundering cases;
- ML and financing of terrorism are in fact, opposites. ML's purpose is to clean dirty money, while financing of terrorism uses clean money for criminal purposes;
- Governments print an astonishing number of banknotes with ever increasing denominations. Despite the digitalisation and the growing penetration of digital payments, cash is still the king;
- Cryptocurrencies are an ideal solution for ML. It's more liquid than cash and can be moved outside the financial system and ML regulations. They are above ML regulations and can skip work the banks can’t. The argument that this system benefits the oppressed must also recognise that it benefits criminals. The crypto companies are accountable to no one: "Tether is answerable to no one but the government of El Salvador". Interestingly, Tether invested $116B in Treasury notes (more than Mexico), gaining power comparable to sovereign states;
- Latvia successfully cleaned up its system from dirty Russian money flowing to the EU since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is one of the few successful cases in tackling ML crime, yet it also brought disillusionment because criminal money didn't dissapear, they just moved to other jurisdictions, while some ordinary citizens suffered from tighter regulations and checks. It is comparable to trying to stop people drinking by closing one shop: it won’t make any meaningful difference, as money will go somewhere else;
- MTIC or carousel fraud (VAT taxes crime) is the most profitable crime in the EU. Britain successfully tackled the issue in 2010s;
The author ends the book with a call to action and suggests innovative solutions that seem obvious but surprisingly haven't been implemented yet:
- Stop printing high-denomination banknotes;
- Make the list of the ultimate beneficiary of the shell companies accessible and transparent;
- Reassess drug legalisation rules - the situation is comparable to the Prohibition era in 1920s that stimulated significant criminal activity.
The author provides an insightful overview of the history of money laundering, which began after WWI and the Great Depression, when heavy restrictions and capital controls prompted people to devise alternative illegal solutions to avoid those restrictions. It started an ever-accelerating race between criminals and legislators trying to fight against ML. Yet, government efforts have delivered dismal results so far, as ML still accounts to 2-5% of global GDP. Modern anti-ML efforts are led by FATF, the Financial Action Task Force, which was created in a hurry first in 1989, then revised after 9/11, but still isn't optimally designed to tackle the crime.
Oliver Bullough explains numerous ways the ML criminals work and accumulate their wealth. Some observations from the chapters I found particularly interesting:
- AI cannot be used for training as there is no sufficient data on money laundering cases;
- ML and financing of terrorism are in fact, opposites. ML's purpose is to clean dirty money, while financing of terrorism uses clean money for criminal purposes;
- Governments print an astonishing number of banknotes with ever increasing denominations. Despite the digitalisation and the growing penetration of digital payments, cash is still the king;
- Cryptocurrencies are an ideal solution for ML. It's more liquid than cash and can be moved outside the financial system and ML regulations. They are above ML regulations and can skip work the banks can’t. The argument that this system benefits the oppressed must also recognise that it benefits criminals. The crypto companies are accountable to no one: "Tether is answerable to no one but the government of El Salvador". Interestingly, Tether invested $116B in Treasury notes (more than Mexico), gaining power comparable to sovereign states;
- Latvia successfully cleaned up its system from dirty Russian money flowing to the EU since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is one of the few successful cases in tackling ML crime, yet it also brought disillusionment because criminal money didn't dissapear, they just moved to other jurisdictions, while some ordinary citizens suffered from tighter regulations and checks. It is comparable to trying to stop people drinking by closing one shop: it won’t make any meaningful difference, as money will go somewhere else;
- MTIC or carousel fraud (VAT taxes crime) is the most profitable crime in the EU. Britain successfully tackled the issue in 2010s;
The author ends the book with a call to action and suggests innovative solutions that seem obvious but surprisingly haven't been implemented yet:
- Stop printing high-denomination banknotes;
- Make the list of the ultimate beneficiary of the shell companies accessible and transparent;
- Reassess drug legalisation rules - the situation is comparable to the Prohibition era in 1920s that stimulated significant criminal activity.
March 12, 2026
Stop the Presses
If only we stopped printing $100 bills, the world of money laundering would be hard hit, according to Oliver Bullough's latest firecracker financial scandal expose. Once again, Bullough lifts the curtain on financial crime, this time the wild world of money laundering, in all its guises. It starts slow, with the origin story about how it was first noticed by an obscure Texas politician and has blown up to a trillion $ + racket.
Once he gets going, Bullough rolls out his impressive analysis, guided by leading experts in banking, compliance and law enforcement. His charming style is the silk glove for his mailed fist. You will be informed and entertained.
If only we stopped printing $100 bills, the world of money laundering would be hard hit, according to Oliver Bullough's latest firecracker financial scandal expose. Once again, Bullough lifts the curtain on financial crime, this time the wild world of money laundering, in all its guises. It starts slow, with the origin story about how it was first noticed by an obscure Texas politician and has blown up to a trillion $ + racket.
Once he gets going, Bullough rolls out his impressive analysis, guided by leading experts in banking, compliance and law enforcement. His charming style is the silk glove for his mailed fist. You will be informed and entertained.
March 24, 2026
A balanced perspective on the current state of money laundering that takes a surprisingly pragmatic and sympathetic view of the role of banks. Essentially, it deconstructs the broken incentive structure that leads to millions of SARs being issued and rarely acted on.
The detail on how money laundering thrives outside the financial system (especially trade-based money laundering, and the Bicester Village example) is genuinely fascinating. It touches on crypto too, although not to the extent of some more crypto-focused books.
3 stars because it remains relatively technical and of niche interest (sadly). But worth a read if you are interested in the area.
The detail on how money laundering thrives outside the financial system (especially trade-based money laundering, and the Bicester Village example) is genuinely fascinating. It touches on crypto too, although not to the extent of some more crypto-focused books.
3 stars because it remains relatively technical and of niche interest (sadly). But worth a read if you are interested in the area.
February 27, 2026
If you have ever wondered why money launderers are able to get away with it and how governments can't seem to (or won't) stop this most obvious crime - then this is the book for you.
It is also the book for you if you fancy a great read, with loads of interesting things in it (no spoiler alert - just dive in).
Instantly engaging and highly readable - this is excellent and I really enjoyed it.
It is also the book for you if you fancy a great read, with loads of interesting things in it (no spoiler alert - just dive in).
Instantly engaging and highly readable - this is excellent and I really enjoyed it.
April 12, 2026
Стодоларова купюра – найпопулярніший номінал. Двадцять років тому вона поступалася двадцятці та одиниці. Сьогодні «сотка» становить 80% усіх паперових доларів в обігу. 70% із них ніколи не бачили Америки – вони циркулюють за кордоном. Тільки Мексика отримує щорічно близько 25 мільярдів доларів готівкою. Хто несе ці гроші через кордон і навіщо – питання, на яке п'ятдесят років законодавчої боротьби так і не дали відповіді.
May 7, 2026
A thorough and interesting exploration of money laundering. I loved the use of specific examples on different laundering practices and associated consequences. It helped ground the complexity of the subject and I learnt a bunch of things about people and places I'd never heard of.
It took me a while to read because it is quite dense, but that suits the subject matter and I found consistent motivation to keep reading.
It took me a while to read because it is quite dense, but that suits the subject matter and I found consistent motivation to keep reading.
April 5, 2026
A fascinating book explaining how the money laundering world works, how some governments have attempted to control it, but actually how their efforts (with one exception) have failed dismally and in some cases actually make it worse.
The book is enlightening and depressing at the same time and is well worth a read.
The book is enlightening and depressing at the same time and is well worth a read.
April 20, 2026
Another wonderful and inciteful book about the dirty money underworld. Incredible we keep doing the same thing and expect different results. But it is clear that the criminals go right to the top. Corrupt politicians are everywhere even Britain. No one wants to rock the boat so we turn a blind eye or accept a new pair of sunglasses, it is all the same. Dirty Money, washed in front of our eyes.
March 7, 2026
Interesting but long-winded. In need of some serious editing.
March 20, 2026
Felt pretty stupid, but also pretty pissed off. In a good way, I guess.
March 30, 2026
A detailed look at money-laundering on an international scale. An interesting subject but a hard slog to get through it.
April 16, 2026
very interesting I learned lots
Very very interesting view into all thinks to do with money laundering extremely well researched and very much worth the time to read it
Very very interesting view into all thinks to do with money laundering extremely well researched and very much worth the time to read it
April 27, 2026
Over many years one financial book 100% worth reading!
April 12, 2026
A well written exploration into the realities of money laundering, why it exists, why governments allow it to continue, and why the majority of it doesn't look the way you think it does. There's a very good argument made in the book that compliance is almost worthless in its current form, creating nothing but modesty and more importantly liability veils. Further the linking of modern day Chinese rich individuals spending money on holidays to the Florentine Medici's trade Empire is a revelation and Margot Robbie in the bathtub level of high impact popularisation of complex topic.
Definitely something to pop onto your nonfiction reading list if you have one.
Definitely something to pop onto your nonfiction reading list if you have one.
May 6, 2026
This is a must read for every CDC-analyst… Very depressing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews