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The Clayton Account
An exhilarating international thriller about a numbered Swiss bank account that switches between London, Zurich, New York, and the cocaine fields of Columbia
374 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 10, 2024
I really couldn’t get into this no matter how much I wanted to like it 😩
March 2, 2014
I read this novel for work, as I am an anti-money laundering consultant and regularly write reviews of money laundering-themed books.
“The Clayton Account” is a really good read (although it does get a bit shoot-em-up towards the end). Thomas Clayton is an American banker living in London. He returns to the US for his father’s funeral, and discovers that his father had US$50 million in a numbered Swiss account – an astronomical sum for a university professor. Tom’s enquiries suggest that his father was unaware that his name and signature were being used on the account, and that the money had come through his grandfather – who seems to have connections with both Colombian drug barons and the IRA.
There are dodgy private bankers: “They accepted the dirty money, cleaned it up and returned it legitimised to its rightful owners. En route they deducted their fee of 10 per cent, extremely reasonable in laundry operations.” There are dodgy lawyers: “Not that Dick had any qualms about taking dirty business. He believed that the world ran on corruption and to him words like right or wrong – per se – were meaningless. In business, only outcomes mattered: success was good, the means to it irrelevant.” And more dodgy lawyers: “He had purposely chosen Spain as he did not believe in obscure offshore companies once the money had been laundered. Serious banks viewed such firms with suspicion and, in most countries, would answer any questions put to them by the authorities. Spain and England were the best. In the former, the administration was second-rate and no-one cared what a Spanish company did outside the country… In England you could set up a company in five minutes with an outlay of less than a hundred pounds. Name-plate offices in London were a penny a score, and genuine administrators would not ask too many questions when given names of non-existent directors all residing outside the UK.” But, as a Colombian drug lord muses wryly: “Having money was no longer good enough. Everyone wanted to know where it had come from. Since the government had gone commercial – the FBI, SEC, Treasury Department – and started offering rewards, you couldn’t trust anybody. Banks, lawyers, accountants, they’d rat on you faster than you could open your wallet.”
Trust is at the heart of this very readable novel – there are so many twists and turns that I will confess that by the end I didn’t know who were the goodies and who were the baddies. The only one I was entirely sure of was the children’s nanny, but for all I know she has a sideline in knock-off Calpol. Very exciting – well worth the read.
“The Clayton Account” is a really good read (although it does get a bit shoot-em-up towards the end). Thomas Clayton is an American banker living in London. He returns to the US for his father’s funeral, and discovers that his father had US$50 million in a numbered Swiss account – an astronomical sum for a university professor. Tom’s enquiries suggest that his father was unaware that his name and signature were being used on the account, and that the money had come through his grandfather – who seems to have connections with both Colombian drug barons and the IRA.
There are dodgy private bankers: “They accepted the dirty money, cleaned it up and returned it legitimised to its rightful owners. En route they deducted their fee of 10 per cent, extremely reasonable in laundry operations.” There are dodgy lawyers: “Not that Dick had any qualms about taking dirty business. He believed that the world ran on corruption and to him words like right or wrong – per se – were meaningless. In business, only outcomes mattered: success was good, the means to it irrelevant.” And more dodgy lawyers: “He had purposely chosen Spain as he did not believe in obscure offshore companies once the money had been laundered. Serious banks viewed such firms with suspicion and, in most countries, would answer any questions put to them by the authorities. Spain and England were the best. In the former, the administration was second-rate and no-one cared what a Spanish company did outside the country… In England you could set up a company in five minutes with an outlay of less than a hundred pounds. Name-plate offices in London were a penny a score, and genuine administrators would not ask too many questions when given names of non-existent directors all residing outside the UK.” But, as a Colombian drug lord muses wryly: “Having money was no longer good enough. Everyone wanted to know where it had come from. Since the government had gone commercial – the FBI, SEC, Treasury Department – and started offering rewards, you couldn’t trust anybody. Banks, lawyers, accountants, they’d rat on you faster than you could open your wallet.”
Trust is at the heart of this very readable novel – there are so many twists and turns that I will confess that by the end I didn’t know who were the goodies and who were the baddies. The only one I was entirely sure of was the children’s nanny, but for all I know she has a sideline in knock-off Calpol. Very exciting – well worth the read.
July 2, 2012
long but interesting enough to keep u glueed to book!
February 13, 2014
surprisingly this was very very good....I say surprisingly as its not something I would normally have picked up....... but it was riveting & definitely a page turner!!!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews