All Is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime

(Hardback)

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Before Enron, before Arthur Anderson, and before Worldcom, there was the Bank of New York money laundering scandal, which hit headlines in 1999. Promising to be one of the most important books on international organized crime, money laundering, and the complicity between legitimate and illegitimate businesses in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, among other places, during the last decade of the 20th century, All Is Clouded by Desire examines the criminal dealings that led to the revelation that the Bank of New York's Eastern European Division laundered $6 billion for Russian organized criminals and other shady organizations and individuals. In a series of intrigues that involved crooked Geneva banker Bruce Rappaport and high-level members of the Bank of New York, criminal Russian organizations were able to thrive and prosper during a time when the rest of the former Soviet Union crumbled amidst growing corruption and a declining economy. Tracing the financial shenanigans back many years, Block and Weaver illustrate how the underworld of high finance, money laundering, mafia groups, CIA operatives, and legitimate banking institutions can clean dirty money and operate criminal enterprises that span the globe. Block and Weaver carefully assemble a vivid examination of the world of hot money in the arena of international banking and the roles played by Intelligence, the politically connected, and the criminally inclined. Focusing on the intensely private Genava banker Bruce Rappaport and the Bank of New York, the authors show how the two worked together with dodgy Russian banks to move and launder billions through channels that include off-shore banks, shady joint-ventures, and outright criminal organizations. Relying on primary sources from the logs of the institutions involved, interviews with British Intelligence operatives and former CIA officers, secret discussions with private detectives handling the infamous Marc Rich tax case, and material collected by two private detective agencies in London and New York, the book exposes the various machinations that were instrumental in completing the financial schemes that would ultimately cause the downfall of two top Bank of New York executives.

Reviews

.,."[A] scholarly yet lively and witty look into the serious crime community. Block and Weaver have greatly enhanced our understanding of so-called "transnational organized crime," all the while vividly depicting various relationships, conspiracies and their machinations among some interesting people. The authors have clearly done their homework and readers will be impressed with the depth of the field files, inter-office memoranda, government documents, research literature, news clippings and interview data into a fascinating and significant study."-Sean Patrick Griffin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Administration of Justice, Penn State Abington and author of Philadelphia's Black Mafia: A Social and Political History
.,."Their exhaustive research documents the unimaginable scope of Russian financial crime, the collapse of its banking industry, and the role of the Bank of New York in the theft of billions of dollars of Russian assets. From New York to Moscow and other points around the world, this is organized crime at its worst, perpetrated not by street-level hoodlums, but by bankers, businessmen, politicians and others willing to bankrupt a nation for personal gain. This is 'must' reading for those interested in international crime, as well as the recent history of Russia."-Frank Scarpittii, Distinguished Professor of Sociology University of Delaware
"A remarkable tale of global fraud that is impeccably researched...and convincingly provides the intricate details of a necessarily very complicated story. This book represents a major piece of scholarship in an area not touched upon by academics, and shows the enormous amount of fieldwork necessary to do it well. A must reading for those interested in the increasingly important, yet vastly understudied area of international financial fraud."-Henry N. Pontell, Professor, Department of Criminology, Law and Society School of Social Ecology University of California, Irvine
"Block and Weaver...present a stunning and richly informative picture of the complexities of criminality in a globalized environment. Their book has daunting implications for the political and law enforcement structures that will be needed to cope with the new world of international money-laundering."-Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies Pennsylvania State University
"This extraordinary and accessible book illuminates through the detailed case study method of living individuals and corporations, the interaction between motives, opportunities and techniques of white-collar and organized crime in a global financial system. The authors should be congratulated for their expose of financial realpolitik, in which shady alliances between 'organised crime' and hypocritical corporate racketeers adjust to the forms of regulation that are put in place around the world, exposing the intentional and unintended gaps in the fabric of serious crime control."-Michael Levi, Professor, School of Social and Administrative Studies, University of Wales
Specialized collections in international crime or finance.-Choice
"Specialized collections in international crime or finance."-Choice

Author Bio

ALAN A. BLOCK is Professor of Crime, Law and Justice at the Pennsylvania State University. He has published extensively on organized crime, and his books include The Organized Criminal Activities of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (2001), Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in the Bahamas (1998), Space, Time, and Organized Crime (1994), and War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of U.S. Policy (1992), among others. CONSTANCE A. WEAVER has been a consultant for several private investigation firms. She has conducted extensive research on various organized crime cases.