Intelligence Squared: "Why Can’t We Stop Money Laundering? With Oliver Bullough"

Date: February 1, 2026
Host: Atusa Araxia Abrahamian
Guest: Oliver Bullough, journalist & author of Everybody Loves Our Dollars

Episode Overview

In this sharp, engaging conversation, investigative journalist Oliver Bullough joins Atusa Araxia Abrahamian of Intelligence Squared to discuss the enduring, global challenge of money laundering. Drawing from his new book Everybody Loves Our Dollars, Bullough examines why—despite decades of laws and multi-billion dollar compliance regimes—the criminal underworld can still effortlessly move and hide vast sums of money. The episode traces the history of anti-money-laundering (AML) efforts, the failures of bureaucracy, the hypocrisy of global financial centers, and the evolving challenges posed by technology, particularly cryptocurrencies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Ironies of Anti-Money Laundering

Who invented anti-money laundering?

• Oliver shares the story of Wright Patman, the “barefoot kid” from Texas who, as a US Congressman, invented the conceptual framework for AML in the 1960s and secured the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) in 1970.
• Quote:

  "He managed to get his piece of legislation… through Congress in 1970, and that was the birth of anti money laundering as an idea, as a legislative program. And so everything that the world has done since then essentially derives from this one idea that this, you know, barefoot kid from northeastern Texas had..."
  — Oliver Bullough (03:34)

The $10,000 rule:

• The famous requirement to declare amounts over $10,000 at borders or when depositing cash stems from Patman’s era.

Early money laundering ("shenanigans"):

• 1970s Florida: Drug traffickers would drive carloads of cash to banks—sometimes so cartoonish that cars full of cash got stolen mid-transfer.
• When laws changed, launderers quickly adapted: buying lottery tickets, flying cash offshore, or exploiting international jurisdictions.

2. Globalization of Dirty Money

• Once US banking tightened, illicit money moved to entire corrupt jurisdictions like Panama and British offshore havens.

• The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was born at the G7 (late 1980s), meant to make anti-money laundering global.

• The shift from reporting all large transactions (the US model) to only reporting "suspicious" transactions (the UK model) diluted enforcement—the system relies on banks identifying and reporting their own suspicious behaviour.

  Quote:

  "We have an astonishingly expensive bureaucratic, paperwork-heavy anti money laundering system which generates hundreds of thousands… of reports every year without actually doing anything at all to stop money laundering.”
  — Oliver Bullough (13:34)

3. Who Gets Targeted? The Problem with Enforcement

• Large economies (US, UK, Switzerland) facilitate the bulk of global laundering, but international bodies tend to punish smaller, less-powerful jurisdictions (e.g., Marshall Islands), often ones set up under the influence of Western advisors.

• This approach is punitive and ineffective, placing compliance costs where they do least good.

• Despite massive expense—over $200 billion annually on compliance—the percentage of laundered money (2–5% of global GDP) remains unchanged since the 1990s.

  Quote:

  “That’s the amount of money that we’re spending on an entirely broken system. And I think that that is a problem that requires far greater scrutiny than it gets at the moment, right?”
  — Oliver Bullough (17:16)

4. The "Regulatory Pageantry" of Compliance

• AML has generated an industry of compliance officers with a sea of acronyms (BSA, AML, CTF, FATF, TBML, etc.).
• Over-reporting dominates: banks file “CYA” (cover your ass) reports purely to avoid fines.
• This creates a tsunami of paperwork that swamps law enforcement, making actual detection of crime rare.
• Quote:

  “It’s a paper or report generating system which essentially exists to protect the financial institutions from being fined without really doing anything at all to stop money laundering.”
  — Oliver Bullough (21:00)

5. Real-World Harms and Discrimination

• The extension of AML to counterterrorism (post-9/11) has led to wide “de-risking” by banks:

  • Charities, especially those connected to Islamic communities, lose access to banking, face investigations, or are simply excluded from the system.
  • These consequences go unnoticed for marginalized communities, while high-profile cases (e.g., Nigel Farage being “debanked”) receive outsized media attention.

• This undermines ideals of fairness and inclusion in Western societies.

  Quote:

  “If you judge the anti money laundering system… what does it actually do? Well, it generates a colossal amount of paperwork, it excludes very large numbers of vulnerable people from the financial system and it costs an absolute fortune…”
  — Oliver Bullough (27:24)

6. The Great Cash Mystery

• Use of cash in ordinary life is plunging (fewer than 10% of transactions in the UK), yet central banks print record volumes of high-denomination bills—primarily $100 bills in the US, 1,000 franc notes in Switzerland.

• These are disproportionately used by criminals and the shadow economy, not regular citizens.

• Governments profit from printing these bills even as they enforce expensive controls—an example of fundamental policy incoherence.

  Quote:

  "At the same time, governments are loading these huge costs… on the financial system to comply with anti money laundering law, and then they're profiting massively by selling the most useful tool for evading those same laws.”
  — Oliver Bullough (29:22)

7. Cryptocurrency: New Tools, Old Problems

• Most cryptocurrencies are too volatile or clunky for crime, but stablecoins (crypto pegged to fiat currencies) are extremely popular for laundering, sanctions evasion, and moving illicit wealth.

• Iranian government, Russian sanctions evaders, and scam syndicates use stablecoins to skirt existing controls.

• Crypto does not replace old laundering methods—it simply expands criminal capacity.

  Quote:

  "Every time the criminals invent a new way of moving money, they don't stop doing the old ones. They still do all the old ones, but then they do the new ones too, which means that the crime just expands because it becomes ever easier to launder money…"
  — Oliver Bullough (41:15)

8. Is There Hope? What Would Real Change Look Like?

• The culprit is not technical limitation, but political will.

• Bullough points to the UK’s campaign against carousel VAT fraud as a rare success: government coordination, strong intelligence, legislative action, and strategic focus crushed an entrenched financial crime.

• What's needed: flexibility, genuine government commitment, and a willingness to disrupt profitable status quos—including among the world's largest financial centers.

  Quote:

  “That kind of effort, scaled up, imaginative, flexible, really well informed by intelligence, is the kind of thing that could really make a difference when it comes to denting money laundering and financial crime.”
  — Oliver Bullough (43:44)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the futility of current enforcement:

  "We have achieved almost nothing… It's a real indictment… Few things are more important, to be honest. And yet we've just failed and failed again."
  — Oliver Bullough (38:09)

• On public perception and hypocrisy:

  “Producing cash is a very profitable thing for governments to do… So that's a $99.90 profit essentially every time you send one out the door.”
  — Oliver Bullough (29:05)

• On regulatory bureaucracy:

  "If there's a four letter acronym, you know, it's a big deal."
  — Oliver Bullough (20:15)

• On who suffers from AML over-cautiousness:

  “Particularly charities with Muslim beneficiaries being really unfairly targeted, unfairly excluded from the financial system. And this is astonishingly counterproductive…”
  — Oliver Bullough (24:54)

• On the true nature of the system:

  “The purpose of a system is what it does. You shouldn't listen to what people who run a system say they're doing, but you should instead look at what they are doing.”
  — Oliver Bullough (27:08)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:34] — Wright Patman and birth of AML
• [07:34] — Money laundering in 1970s Florida and the "arms race" between authorities and launderers
• [11:25] — Globalization of laundering tactics: how rules in the US shifted money to offshore havens
• [14:39] — Why international enforcement focuses on small jurisdictions (e.g., Marshall Islands)
• [17:16] — The unchanged scale of money laundering despite expensive efforts
• [19:20] — The "regulatory pageantry" and deluge of compliance acronyms
• [21:00] — The "CYA" phenomenon and over-reporting by banks
• [22:53] — Real-world harms: Muslim charities and the consequences of overzealous monitoring
• [28:24] — The paradox of falling cash use but rising cash printing
• [35:56] — Anecdote: Swiss 1,000 franc bills and perceptions of large denominations
• [39:42] — Crypto and the laundering “arms race”
• [42:59] — Encouraging precedent: the UK’s fight against carousel fraud
• [45:00] — Closing remarks: hope for meaningful, coordinated reform

Tone and Style

Oliver Bullough's observations are witty, unsparing, and often darkly humorous, while Atusa Abrahamian keeps the conversation lively, approachable, and rooted in practical examples. Both emphasize the absurdity and injustice of the current system, without ever losing sight of the underlying seriousness and human impact.

Final Takeaway

Money laundering—far from being a victimless, technical or unsolvable white-collar crime—is deeply entwined with global corruption, violence, and social harm. The fight against it is failing not for lack of technology or knowledge, but for lack of genuine political will and honest scrutiny. Oliver Bullough’s clear-eyed analysis makes a passionate plea for reconsideration, courage, and meaningful reform.

For listeners who want more:

• Everybody Loves Our Dollars by Oliver Bullough
• Further episodes of Intelligence Squared on global finance, corruption, and policy reform