VERY BAD PEOPLE

The book 'reads like a high-speed chase against high-level corruption, criminals and con-men', and is the inside story of the fight against the world's network of corruption. Arms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals, superyachts, private jets and super car collections, blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. Co-founder Patrick Alley (Nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for exposing the role of Blood Diamonds in numerous African wars) reveals inside track on a breathtaking catalogue of modern super-crimes, and the 'shadow network' that enables them as he follows the money going undercover in dangerous places and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super villains. One dictator's son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle and there are the well-known corporations who are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents helps park dirty money in London, New York or offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes. 'Reads like a John le Carré novel, but is, in fact, very real.' The story told in this book of three useful idealists who go from eating cold baked beans in a draughty London flat to the Thai-Cambodian border where they posed as traders in illegally felled timer is simply riveting. It is a clear-eyed account of a world poisoned by dark money where young people with sufficient passion and intelligence have the capacity to go after some of the most powerful governments and corporations and shame and humiliate them. 320pp.