Some parts of this book began life as articles elsewhere, so thank you to the editors who commissioned them, particularly Natalia Antelava, Sigrid Rausing and Tom Clark.
I did not do as much traveling to research this book as I originally intended because of the COVID-19 lockdown, but I was fortunate to get trips organized to the British Virgin Islands and to Gibraltar before the world shut its doors. In the BVI thank you to Aragorn Dick-Read, Frederica and family for their hospitality and the loan of their cabin, and thanks to Josie Stewart and Nick Shaxson for the introductions. In Gibraltar thank you to the couple who showed me around; you know who you are. In Bridgnorth thank you to Jeff Malone. Among the people I spoke to from my desk: huge thanks to David Leask for talking me through SLPs and to Tamsyn Edmonds for talking me through private prosecutions.
I have been lucky to accumulate a large group of friends who like talking about corruption and financial crime as much as I do, so thank you to them for letting me bounce ideas around, and in particular to: Roman Borisovich, Graham Barrow, Richard Smith, Heather Marquette, Liz David-Barrett, Sue Hawley, Peter Geoghegan and Daria Kaleniuk.
At Profile I am very lucky to work with Ed Lake, who is an understanding and encouraging editor. At Curtis Brown my agent Karolina Sutton is the big sister I never knew I needed.
Lockdown wasn’t any fun obviously, but it was made incomparably better than it might have been by the fact I was stuck indoors with two such awesome sons and such a magnificent wife. I literally couldn’t have done this without your support, encouragement, tolerance and occasional mockery. I owe you all ice creams/gin and tonic (delete as applicable). Thank you!