 Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite
By Jake Bernstein Published in November 2017 352 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 The Panama Papers revealed that dozens of hundreds of world leaders, criminals, politicians, businessmen, and celebrities had registered entities with a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca. This book chronicles the history of this law firm, explains how this firm helped its clients mitigate taxes, hide their assets, and eventually how it leaked data which resulted in its downfall. Mossack Fonseca was founded by the 1986 merger of two small law firms. One was founded by the son of a German WW2 refugee and the other by a Panamanian leftist revolutionary turned lawyer. This firm specialized in finding jurisdictions that had favorable taxes and secrecy laws, and helping clients register businesses there. The firm was most active in the early 2000s, when it opened dozens of law officers across the world I actually have many good friends in this very business. Many work with citizenship by investment programs, Special Economic Zones, and small countries. The industry has not changed significantly despite the revelations of the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers. The first half of the book covers the founding of the firm, its growth, and activities. It is somewhat interesting. However, the author is an obvious communist who cannot resist inserting judgmental statements about politics which can be tedious at times. Eventually, the firm’s data was leaked due to lazy opsec and cybersecurity practices. The rest of the book follows the - very boring - lives of the journalists who leaked the data. The second half of the book is excruciating because the journalists are mostly losers and complainers. I can summarize 100 pages in one sentence: going through the Panama Papers was a lot of hard work, and the journalists had to work on short deadlines. For money laundering books to be good, they must fall into one of two categories: they must either be very informative, or very exciting. This book was neither. I didn’t learn anything new (although, to be fair, I already am somewhat of an industry insider). It also wasn’t exciting - the most exciting segments detail the lives of journalists crunching through deadlines and dealing with obtrusive funding committees. Finally, the author is very judgmental. He makes many assumptions which he doesn’t adequately defend. He just assumes that measures to create financial secrecy are bad, and I have no sense that he has even considered the other side of the argument. He creates a straw man - that supporters of tax havens just care about the economic benefits they bring to countries like Liechtenstein - and then attacks that by countering that tax havens deprive money for social programs. For example, he doesn’t acknowledge that the US government is a downright evil police state which uses taxpayer money to fund genocide in Palestine, racist cops who kill black people in cold blood, finances right wing terrorists in Latin America, and irradiates Iraq using depleted uranium. He simply assumes that everyone who has money is bad, and the government is a fundamentally benign institution. My position is the polar opposite. Our world is becoming an increasingly repressive, violent, and totalitarian police state. Any steps which private citizens can take to undermine the state are welcome breaths of fresh air. The economist Ludwig von Mises once wrote that “capitalism breathes through loopholes.” I do not recommend this book. There are much better books on the world of financial secrecy.
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 Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
By Bill Browder Published in April 2022 336 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This book is a fast paced action packed account of how the author, Bill Browder, exposed a massive Russian state backed money laundering network. I listened to the audiobook, which is masterfully read by Adam Grupper - one of the most pleasant audiobooks I have heard in awhile. Bill Browder is a creep with bad physiognomy. Google him, and find a picture of him. He is your stereotypical spooky fund manager. I’ve met a lot of guys who look like him at finance conferences in Zurich and Washington DC, and that kind of person is always bad juju. The truth about Bill Browder’s story depends on who you trust. These facts are uncontested: he founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996. Hermitage went into Russia right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and participated in the privatization of Russian state assets. The investments wildly succeeded, seeing a 2500% plus return on investment. If you believe Browder, he invested in Gazprom. Russian mobsters worked with crooked cops to forge documents, and stole 10% of Hermitage’s assets. If you believe the Russians, Browder worked with corrupt officials to steal his own assets. Obviously Browder paints a good picture of himself and a very sinister picture of Russia. He describes himself as an “activist investor,” trying to stomp corruption out of the companies where he invested. I don’t know the details, but in my own career, I have seen other people describe themselves as “activist investors.” Often, they are pro-socialism and pro-imperialism investors who complain about “diversity” or “climate change,” then use those causes to bully people. Once again, I do not know the details of Browder’s investments - but am suspicious of people who use that language. Russia responds to Browder’s investments violently. They first expelled Browder from Russia. Then they slowly start jailing, arresting, and intimidating his associates. Sergei Magnitsky is imprisoned, then tortured to death. Boris Nemtsov is murdered. One of Browder’s friends was poisoned, and survived with life changing injuries. Another was thrown off a roof by mobsters or spies posing as construction workers, and slowly and painfully died from his injuries. I personally know people who have been tortured by the Russian government. I know people who participated in anti-Putin protests, and had to endure absolutely horrible treatment at the hands of police. I also know people associated with the band Pussy Riot, who also had horrible things happen to them. I have no doubts that the mistreatment by Russian officials that Browder describes are completely real, and unexaggerated. The Russians also harass Browder in many other ways. They put out false interpol arrest warrants, which get him detained at the Geneva airport and later in a hotel in Spain. They hired the corrupt American lawyer John Moscow to gain Browder’s trust, obtain secret information, then betray him. They hired private investigators to disrupt him while he was skiing in Colorado with his family. Browder also admits to using dirty tricks, although his dirty tricks are far less dirty. He dodges subpoena servers, which is illegal in the United States. He also uses defamation lawyers to censor his opponent’s movie, and prevent it from getting screened. Browder denies that he is a US intelligence asset. I am sure that he is, but do not have any proof or evidence. You rarely can get into the mind of the hedge fund managers pillaging countries on behalf of US intelligence agencies. This autobiography is absolutely fascinating, and I recommend it highly. Finally, I want to end on a final note. Many people have a retarded “our team” versus “their team” worldview. I know people who correctly mistrust the US government, which has a very bad recent track record of truth telling, but instead blindly believe Russian propaganda that they see on RT and Telegram. I also know people, including many Russian exiles, who distrust Putin’s government, but believe everything that they see on CNN and in the New York Times. The reality is that we live in a world where good and moral governments are rare - usually confined to places like Singapore and Switzerland. Most governments are imperial states, which collude with private finance, to violently crush all opposition. The reader should see this as not just a cautionary tale about Russia, but a cautionary tale about what happens to enemies of the state in general. This is a fantastic book, and I recommend it highly.  In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy
By Frédéric Martel Published in February 2019 576 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 Like everyone, I had heard vaguely about the Vatican sex abuse problems. I expected this book to be about that. To my surprise, the problem goes way beyond sex abuse - this book alleges that roughly half of the leadership of the Catholic church is homosexual. Homosexuality has a long, and strange history in the Vatican. On one hand, the Catholic Church is very politically opposed to homosexuality. On the other hand, many high level Catholic priests have been found to be secretly gay. A lot of things surprised me. First, I didn’t know that the Catholic church was openly homophobic. In fact, my personal experience has been the complete opposite - that Catholics are a bunch of obnoxious homosexual social justice warriors who never shut up about LGBT rights. However, my experience mostly involved dealing with Catholics in the San Francisco and Washington DC areas. I was very surprised to hear that, in fact, the Catholic church isn’t predominantly leftist. The author is a lot older than I am. It might boil down to a generational difference - he grew up in a world with a very different Catholic church than I did. The other thing that surprised me was likely the thing that surprised just about everyone who read this book: that the entire leadership of the Catholic church is openly gay. In many cases, the evidence is direct - court cases, admissions, interviews with gay priests, etc… In other cases, the admission is anecdotal - interviews with gay prostitutes in Rome, rumors, the presence of homosexual paraphernalia, etc… The authors even used gay dating apps in the Vatican, and through data engineering, found many clergymen on the apps. Attempts by the Catholic church to reduce the presence of homosexuality in the church have dramatically backfired. This has only succeeded in attracting self-hating homosexuals. The presence of large amounts of celibate and closeted homosexuals contributes to pedophilia. The author argues that the solution is, instead, to allow priests to marry people of either gender. That will make it easier for the church to attract people with normal sexual tendencies, rather than people desperately attempting to restrain themselves. One example really stood out to me. For awhile, some Catholic churches offered gay conversion therapy - a therapeutic treatment designed to help homosexuals become heterosexual. This gay conversion therapy was usually targeted towards teenagers. The priest administering the therapy would undress the boys, and masturbate them. Obviously, the gay conversion therapy was just a ploy for pedophilic abuse with vulnerable teenagers. I’ve never liked Catholicism for the following reason - it is a religion entirely predicated on earthly authority - the authority of a Medieval corporation. Most Catholics I have met are very uninformed, and can’t even tell you who the most prominent medieval popes were and what they did. They cannot explain, in historical terms, why the papacy exists and should exist. They are both ignorant and loud. I have many Catholic friends who happen to be homosexual. Immediately after publishing this book review, I will suggest that they read it. I look forwards to hearing their thoughts. |
Thibault SerletMost of my articles are book reviews, but I also write about many other topics. Archives
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