In the globalised 21st century, where organised criminals and international terrorists reign as the most powerful special-interest group, money laundering has grown from a niche white-collar crime into an industry that reaches deep into legitimate business and government. Following in the footsteps of his previous international bestseller - The Laundrymen (heralded as the definitive work on money laundering) - Jeffrey Robinson brings the story full circle, back to the netherworld, where the business of crime and the business of terror do their banking. In his highly readable, devastating exposé, the first thorough dissection of the dark heart of global capitalism, Robinson follows a trail of dirty money as it moves from the streets of Manchester and Karachi, Chicago and Dubai, via the Channel Islands, to the beaches of Antigua, the Caymans and the Pacific. It is a path that leads ultimately to the dealing rooms of New York, the vaults of Zurich and the plushest boardrooms of the City of London. Dirty money drives much of the world's economy. But who exactly are the people behind its shadowy operations? Robinson fingers them, lifting the lid on the lawyers, bankers, accountants, company formation agents, CEOs, despots and governments who have created - and who actively sustain - this world of window-dressing regulations. It is a world where the criminal, terrorist and corporate giant live side by side, beyond the reach of the law, growing into forms of weightless, invisible power. Society has to face a stark choice. Either to find the will and the means to bring law and order to the offshore world. Or to lie down and accept a future of pervasive corruption and the possible collapse of any real democracy. In the globalised 21st century, where organised criminals and international terrorists reign as the most powerful special-interest group, money laundering has grown from a niche white-collar crime into an industry that reaches deep into legitimate business and government. Following in the footsteps of his previous international bestseller - The Laundrymen (heralded as the definitive work on money laundering) - Jeffrey Robinson brings the story full circle, back to the netherworld, where the business of crime and the business of terror do their banking. In his highly readable, devastating exposé, the first thorough dissection of the dark heart of global capitalism, Robinson follows a trail of dirty money as it moves from the streets of Manchester and Karachi, Chicago and Dubai, via the Channel Islands, to the beaches of Antigua, the Caymans and the Pacific. It is a path that leads ultimately to the dealing rooms of New York, the vaults of Zurich and the plushest boardrooms of the City of London. Dirty money drives much of the world's economy. But who exactly are the people behind its shadowy operations? Robinson fingers them, lifting the lid on the lawyers, bankers, accountants, company formation agents, CEOs, despots and governments who have created - and who actively sustain - this world of window-dressing regulations. It is a world where the criminal, terrorist and corporate giant live side by side, beyond the reach of the law, growing into forms of weightless, invisible power. Society has to face a stark choice. Either to find the will and the means to bring law and order to the offshore world. Or to lie down and accept a future of pervasive corruption and the possible collapse of any real democracy. "The Money Sink" tells the how, when and why of criminal and terrorist money laundering, the murky and ultra-secret world where the line between legitimate business and crime vanishes. In 1994, when Jeffrey Robinson, author of "The Laundrymen", first brought to the world's attention the problems of dirty money - revealing how otherwise legitimate lawyers, bankers, accountants and even governments were helping drug traffickers hide the proceeds of their crimes - he labelled money laundering the world's third largest business, estimating that at any given time there was around $300 billion circling the globe, looking to get clean. Now, in the sequel to "The Laundrymen", Robinson calculates that the dirty money business has doubled in less than ten years and is ever more sophisticated (law enforcement and concerned governments flounder in its wake) - and he lays the blame on the offshore world. In an eye-opening piece of investigative journalism, Robinson reveals the state of the art of business-as-crime worldwide. As vast profits are turned into seemingly legitimate money, lawyers, bankers, accountants, brokers and governments have sold out to the mob and terrorists learn the lessons too and use Western financial networks to finance attacks on those same systems.