Moneyland and Rich Russians

This event is jointly hosted with the Scotland Russia Forum.

Moneyland tells the story of how the world's super-rich have broken free of democratic control, and formed their own nomadic global community. It looks at tax evasion and illicit financial networks, much achieved through the “offshore” economy of tax havens, shell companies and legal blind spots, much of which has benefitted the City of London.

Rich Russians describes how having achieved their riches over the course of a single generation, the top 0.1 percent of Russian society have become known for ostentatious lifestyles and tastes. Nevertheless, as Elisabeth Schimpfössl shows in this book, their stories reveal a bourgeois existence that is distinct in its circumstances and self-definition, and far more complex than the caricatures suggest.

Speaker profiles

Oliver Bullough is a journalist and author who moved in 1999 to Russia to work as a journalist. He worked first for local newspapers in St Petersburg and Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), then for Reuters. He stayed in Moscow, mainly reporting on the war in Chechnya, until 2006.

Dr Elisabeth Schimpfössl is a lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University, Birmingham. Her research focus is into the sociology of elites, power and social inequality, and, second, comparative research into media and journalism in post-communist Europe.

If you want to know why international crooks and their eminently respectable financial advisors walk tall and only the little people pay taxes, this is the ideal book for you. Every politician and moneyman on the planet should read it, but they won't because it's actually about them.

John le Carré, author of A Legacy of Spies

Coffee and registration from 18:00. The event will be followed by a networking drinks reception from 20:00.