“A fully-serviced tower block that is empty for most of the year, whilst most Londoners can barely find an affordable place to rent in London. Houses in London are not being used as homes, but as concrete safes, looking after (often laundered) money.”

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

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Roberto Saviano9

Italian journalist, writer and essayist 1979

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“But the problem is that the boundaries of tax havens themselves can become very blurred. London is an international financial system that sees trillions of dollars from all over the world go through it each year, and that offers the most sought after financial services. This alone would be enough to make this city a desired anchorage for those looking to launder and reinvest unlawful funds. But there is more; besides this, the British capital is at the heart of the world’s most important offshore system.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

“London is the clearing-house of the world.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech at Guildhall, London, Jan. 19, 1904.
1900s

“Have you ever asked yourselves why Mafias from all over the world are constantly opening restaurants, cafes or shops? Because this type of commercial activity has huge amounts of cash coming in. A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has. In Italy, where tax avoidance is extremely high, we know that when a shopkeeper is reluctant to give you a receipt he or she is almost definitely committing an offence, but almost definitely not a Mafioso. Businesses run by the Mafia will always give you a receipt. And the Russian Mafia, in the years of the wavering ruble, safely stored away its money in London’s luxury homes, fuelling London’s property bubble with dirty money. The fictitious buying and selling of property is one of organised crime’s favourite ways of laundering money. … This is how entire neighbourhoods in London are becoming unoccupied, turning into investments’ empty spaces. Money moves in, and people move out.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

“The only place in London where one can forget that it is Sunday.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

On the Brompton Oratory, in "Table Talk" p. 63.
Under the Hill and Other Essays (1904)

“"Rock over London. Rock on Chicago." - Repeated at the end of most songs”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Lyrics

“Unlawful revenue which, after being conveniently cleaned, is then reinvested within the legal economy: polluting it, corrupting it, forging it, killing it. Whether it’s reinvested in the London property market, in Parisian restaurants, or in hostels on the French Riviera. Drug trafficking money will buy homes that honest folk can no longer afford; it will open shops that will sell at more competitive prices than legitimate shops; it will start businesses that can afford to be more competitive than clean businesses. But one thing must be clear: these businesses are not interested in being successful; the main purpose for which they were created was to launder money, turning money that shouldn’t even exist into clean and usable money. In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the financial crisis; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

“Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 3. lines 87-88
The Bard (1757)

“The most bitter insult one can offer to a Londoner is "bastard" — which, taken for what it means, is hardly an insult at all.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 32

“Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives (2009).

“Where there are neglected opportunities we will seize on them, and we will focus on the priorities of the people of London: cutting crime, improving transport, protecting green space, delivering affordable housing, giving taxpayers value for money in every one of the 32 boroughs.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

“A fully-serviced tower block that is empty for most of the year, whilst most Londoners can barely find an affordable place to rent in London. Houses in London are not being used as homes, but as concrete safes, looking after (often laundered) money.”

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Roberto Saviano9

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