The Sink: Crime, Terror, and Dirty Money in the Offshore World

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

This book is a follow-up to Robinson’s crime exposés The Laundrymen:
Inside Money Laundering, the World’s Third Largest Business (1994) and
The Merger: The Conglomeration of International Organized Crime (2000).
It updates his examination of “dirty money” and global crime
networks, highlighting the role of offshore banking in disguising
illegitimate profits. Developing his argument through a series of case
studies ranging worldwide, Robinson shows how sophisticated laundering
has become, how so-called reputable organizations are involved in the
business, and how lax regulation continues to make the phenomenon
possible.

Robinson has produced here another entertaining and persuasive book.
His case studies, delivered with genuine storytelling skill, indict
bankers worldwide, as well as the governments that should be regulating
them, for their failures to crack down on criminal financing. As
Robinson explains, “According to a U.S. Senate Report, virtually every
major bank in the world—especially the biggest in North America and
Europe—holds accounts for offshore banks and/or banks in suspect
jurisdictions.”

A globalized world, we learn, has led to a globalized underworld that
can hide illicit profits with stunning ease. Of particular relevance to
Canadians are the stories of our nation’s highly successful hydroponic
marijuana growers and telemarketing fraudsters, who launder millions in
profits in the Caribbean through ostensibly legitimate channels. Also
compelling is Robinson’s examination of the ways in which terrorist
organizations rely on very accommodating bankers to fund their
operations. As he concludes about the steps that must be taken to
mitigate the growth of global crime syndicates, “If politicians are
serious about going after the bad guys, then lawmakers need to look no
further than the laundrymen. Criminals may deliberately put themselves
beyond jurisdiction, but their money is local and the laundrymen are
local too. Without cash flow and reinvestment, no business can survive.
So the aim must be to cut into the cash flow and reinvestment to
bankrupt these criminal businesses.”