Summary
Ep.28 W1G
What connects a wide-screen TV in the toilet, a faked blockbuster film and an elaborate Las Vegas heist? Turns out... it's one address in central London.
This is the story of how Oliver Bullough followed a tangle of financial crimes back to the source, discovering a far-from-transparent system on the way!
Read all about it: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/19/offshore-central-london-curious-case-29-harley-street and https://www.waterstones.com/book/moneyland/oliver-bullough/9781781257920
Hosted and produced: Maeve McClenaghan
Production support: Cheeka Eyers
Music: Dice Muse
This series of The Tip-Off is brought to you in association with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and funding from Charities Aid Foundation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a story that spans the globe. |
| 0:15.5 | It involves an Ocean's Eleven-style rip-off, dictators' palaces and faked movies. And at the center of it |
| 0:23.2 | all, one property, one address. Today, we have three stories with one big thing in common. |
| 0:32.4 | 29 Harley Street. My name is Oliver Bullough. I'm a freelance journalist and an author. |
| 0:40.4 | Oliver Buller is a journalist and author, originally from Wales, who moved to Russia in |
| 0:45.6 | 1999 to work as a journalist. He worked there in St. Petersburg and then in Kyrgyzstan |
| 0:51.9 | and finally ended up at Reuters. |
| 0:58.8 | He stayed in Moscow, mainly reporting under Warren Chechnya, until 2006. |
| 1:02.2 | And since then, he's worked as a freelance journalist. |
| 1:04.4 | So his beat has always been global. |
| 1:09.6 | And indeed, this story starts abroad, in the most unusual of places. |
| 1:13.6 | I'm Maeve McLanagan. This is the tip-off. |
| 1:19.6 | Our first chapter today, the President's Secret. |
| 1:25.6 | Back in 2014, Oliver was in Ukraine. He was working as a freelancer and filing stories about the recent |
| 1:30.0 | revolution, a protest that turned into a siege that led to the ousting of the president, |
| 1:35.6 | Vika Yanukovych, and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. |
| 1:51.3 | I'm a freelance journalist. I'm a kind of specialist in the former Soviet Union. I was there because I was revolution. That was all. |
| 1:59.7 | Yanukovych had fled the country, leaving opulent palaces ripe for exploring. And that's where Oliver found himself one day. |
| 2:02.3 | It was like the biggest log cabin in the world. |
| 2:03.8 | It's like a five-story log cabin. |
| 2:07.1 | It's insane, the luxury and then the hunting lodge and then other palaties. Mouth agape, Oliver stood in the grounds of the log cabin, taking it all in. |
| 2:12.1 | Up ahead, his guide, a revolutionary called Anton, showed him around. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Tip Off, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Tip Off and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.