A Rough Guide to Money Laundering

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

More than 90 per cent of transactions in the UK are now cashless, yet there is more cash in circulation than ever before. In the UK, there’s about £1300 circulating for every individual; in the US it’s more than $7000, and the majority of this exists in the highest-denomination banknotes, such as the $100 and €500 bills. So where is it all? Remarkably, nobody really knows, but the assumption is that it’s underpinning much of the world’s criminal activity. John Lanchester joins Tom to talk through the many ways this money is hidden and processed, from the three classic stages of money laundering (placement, layering and integration) to the methods used to bypass banks entirely, through the purchase of agricultural equipment or the use of store cards and cash-only businesses such as vape shops and nail bars. Read John Lanchester on money laundering: https://lrb.me/lanchester052026pod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Charleston in Sussex was the modernist home and studio of some of the artists, writers and thinkers
0:07.0	known as the Bloomsbury Group. Until the 6th of September, a new exhibition at Charleston
0:12.5	in Furl, Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press, considers Virginia Woolf not just as a writer,
0:18.3	but as a printer and publisher. The exhibition brings together hand-printed
0:22.4	books, illustrated editions and collaborative works. And the Charleston Festival opens on the 13th of
0:29.2	May with the publishers Margaret Busby and Charmaine Lovegrove joining Gabby Wood to discuss the
0:35.2	radical legacy of the Hogarth Press. Later that evening,
0:38.8	ten Hogarth Press books from Orlando to the wasteland will be brought vividly to life
0:43.9	in a dramatic reading. This year's festival programme also includes Douglas Stewart,
0:49.7	Jeanette Winterson, Tyari Jones, Olivia Lang and Joelle Taylor, among many others.
0:55.9	Visit www.charleston.org.uk to find out more. You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones, and our subject today
1:21.5	is the great mystery of money laundering, a more mysterious business than you may realize,
1:26.9	certainly more mysterious
1:27.9	than I ever realized, and who better to shine a light on the murk, and it is very murky,
1:34.6	and the author of How to Speak Money, John Lancaster, who's also a contributing editor at the
1:39.3	LRB, and the author of many novels, including most recently Look What You Made Me Do, which was published by Faber in March.
1:46.8	His piece in the latest issue of the LRB is a review of two books.
1:50.6	Everybody Loves Our Dollars, How Money Laundering One by Oliver Bullough, and How to Laund a
1:56.2	guide for Law Enforcement, Prosecutors and policy makers by George Cottrell and Lawrence Burke
2:02.6	Files. Hello John and thank you for joining me today. Hi Tom, thank you for having me.
2:07.4	So do you have any cash on you? Not a red hackney. I did actually go through various, you know,
2:13.6	we've got sort of dishes and bowls and various, you know, receptacles that you think
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 10 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from London Review of Books, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of London Review of Books and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.