CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

PART I
ILLEGALITY:
WE LIKE THE MONEY
This [Citibank] account is turning into an exciting profitable one for
us all. Many thanks for making me look good. 1
—Amy Elliott, 1993
These are the very flaws in the western financial system which are
becoming a noose for it. 2
—Osama bin Laden, 2001
INTERPOL’S HEAD of anti–money laundering operations in Lyon, France,
leaned back and asked, “Do you have anything to add?” 3
He was a highly competent official with three decades of experience in
law enforcement. After four years at Interpol and now approaching his retirement,
we struck up an easy rapport. For two-and-a-half hours he told me
tales of assorted drug dealers and criminal syndicate heads illegally shifting
their money in and out of countries, washing their proceeds to make them
look clean and legitimate.
“Anything to add?” I repeated. “You haven’t cited a single example of
moving criminal money that I haven’t seen years ago in the business of moving
corrupt and commercial dirty money.”
Flabbergasted, he bent forward, learning for the first time that everything
he’d worked on had antecedents in the accepted routines of transferring
the proceeds of corruption and tax evasion. I was stunned to realize that
21