Jeffrey Robinson - The Laundrymen - Inside Money Laundering

JEFFREY ROBINSON

THE LAUNDRYMEN

Inside Money Laundering - The Worlds Third Largest Business

1996, 2009

This Book Is For Uncle Tonton Robby

With Love From Joshua Seth and Celine Chelsea

AVANT-PROPOS TO THE E-BOOK EDITION

The Laundrymen came about in an odd way and has had quite a history. It began in London in the early 1990s when I first met John Hurley, who was then the Customs Attach at the US Embassy on Grosvenor Square.

When people find out that you write for a living, its a given that they will suggest topics of interest to them for your next project. John was no exception. "Why don't you write a book about money laundering?" This time, instead of my stock response, "Interesting idea, let me think about it," I had to answer, "What's that?" These were the dark ages, long before dirty money was the flavor of the month subject for cop dramas and films.

He began telling me stories of drug traffickers and huge amounts of cash, of sting operations and exotic locations where money could be hidden in shell companies and secret bank accounts, and my eyes opened wide. Writers are like second-story men. We work the same neighborhood rich in jewels until we stumble across a new place to ply our trade. I told him I wanted to know more, so he took out a piece of paper and, off the top of his head, wrote down ten names and phone numbers. He offered, "Just tell them I said to call."

That afternoon I started with the first name on the list. The man answered his own phone, which is not always a good sign because the better the neighborhood, the better hidden the jewels. But this turned out to be a great neighborhood --- the private line of the man in charge of enforcement at the US Justice Department. I explained that I was ringing on the advice of John Hurley. And he said, "Whatever you need, you got it."

It was the same with the second name and number on the list --- the private line of the fellow in charge of enforcement at the Treasury Department. "If John said to call, youre okay with me."

Long before Id dialed everyone on Johns list --- and I called them all that day --- I realized that hed hooked me up with the top people in the business. "Im looking into the subject of money laundering," I said to each of them, and each responded, "Come see me. Ill give you everything you need."

Thanks entirely to John and his contacts, I was able to work myself deep inside a subject where no author had been before --- or, for that matter, where very few authors have been since. I spoke at length, on the record and off the record, to those ten people who told me their stories, and each of them then put me in touch with dozens of others with stories to tell. I worked hundreds of primary sources and was given access to thousands of documents, many of them classified. I talked to all the good guys. And I talked to loads of bad guys, most of whom were, bizarrely, happy to brag about the cash they had washed. I even found one man in Witness Protection who was, perhaps understandably, less than thrilled that I could find him. But he spoke with me, nonetheless.

The field was wide open for me and I broke bread with all of the major players.

Before long I phoned my publisher, the wonderful Nick Webb at Simon & Schuster in London, and simply told him, "Money laundering." He responded the same way I had when I first heard the term, "Whats that?" I said, "Nick, trust me." He did and The Laundrymen hit the UK best-seller list the same week it was published.

The US edition appeared a year or so later. This Kindle version is the 1996 US edition, with light revisions to bring a few of the stories up to date.

The Laundrymen has now appeared in more than a dozen different foreign languages, and wherever it has been published, the book has generated its own stories. For instance, in Portugal where it was a front page news story, The Laundrymen was instrumental in getting money laundering legislation through parliament. In the Czech Republic, where it was the main feature on a television evening news program --- cameras followed me as I showed them how easy it was to launder drug cash at a bureau de change --- the book also helped get new anti-money laundering legislation in place. The book changed the way Caribbean banking and shell company formation is viewed, and in a few instances, changed the way that Caribbean jurisdictions operate. The book was, as well, one of the first --- if not the first --- to fully explain Nigerian 419 fraud. Thats the letter, or email, each of us has received dozens of times from some phony official saying that if we will allow him to put a huge sum of money through our bank account, we can keep up to half of it. Within months of exposing that fraud, I actually received a 419 letter addressed to me as "Author of The Laundrymen."

In Switzerland, the book brought out the wrath of the Swiss Banking authorities for claiming --- rightfully so --- that secret banking laws aided and abetted drug traffickers. Authorities in Liechtenstein were equally displeased for much the same reason. Nor were they terribly pleased in Luxembourg, where shell companies were being used by traffickers. And in Canada, where money laundering laws were then non-existent, the book helped to reinforce our closest neighbors image as "the Maytag of the north."

In France and Germany, The Laundrymen was the basis of a major television documentary, which I scripted and narrated, the English language version of which has been seen around the world. I also wrote the script and did the narration for the BBCs television version of the book.

Clearly instrumental in popularizing the subject of money laundering, The Laundrymen and I still show up on news programs around the world. Off the back of the book, I have spoken at hundreds of major meetings and corporate events about money laundering and organized crime. In two instances, The Laundrymen was even mentioned in criminal court trials, specifically by defendants who blamed me for their troubles. One of them actually testified under oath, "I got the idea from Jeffrey Robinsons book on money laundering." In another case, television cameras accompanied police on a raid of a lawyers office. He was being busted for money laundering. And the first piece of evidence the cops seized was a copy of The Laundrymen.

The single most laudatory comment about the book came from a young detective whom I met at a conference. He told me that hed been working in a dead end job until he read The Laundrymen, which had inspired him not just to become a cop, but to specialize in financial fraud and money laundering investigations.

Of course, when it comes to flattery, imitation is said to be the sincerest form. Accordingly, I suspect, I should be wildly flattered because The Laundrymen has been plagiarized --- not once, but twice! A professional conman in Holland waited a couple of years after the Dutch edition of the book came out, scanned it word for word into his computer, changed the title to the aptly named, "Fraud" and published it as his own. We had to sue to stop him. More recently, a German sleazebag pretending to be an author, lifted chapters out, reprinted some in their entirety and slightly rewrote others, before publishing my book under his name. Weve had to stop him, too.

And then there has been near-plagiarism. A handful of authors in the States and the UK have merely taken my research, quotes and all, and used it in ripped-off versions. One actually had the temerity to publish with an almost identical title and, then, to ask me for a cover quote. His book, like most of those others, was rife with factual errors and, justifiably, sank without a trace. Sadly, for people who paid money for a copy, none of these guys have the primary sources I do and therefore cant possibly provide their readers with the depth of knowledge that John Hurleys contacts --- and all the contacts who followed --- have bestowed on me.