An economy kept afloat by mafia cash is not just the stuff of Le Carré thrillers | Jonathan Freedland

If that sounds like the plot of a thriller, that's because it's the set-up of the new and utterly riveting John le Carré novel, Our Kind of Traitor. The Russian gangster is Dima, whose fate we follow as a rogue unit in British intelligence seeks to reel the would-be defector in to safety on England's shores.


Now here's another storyline. Leading banks around the world, desperate for cash in the financial crisis, turn to the proceeds of organised crime as "the only liquid investment capital" available, eventually absorbing the greater part of a staggering $352bn of drugs profits into the global economic system, laundering that vast sum in the process.


Sounds far-fetched, but that's no fiction. That tale was published in the Observer in December 2009, when the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime admitted that colossal piles of drugs money had kept the world financial system afloat when it looked dangerously close to collapse.

- read the Guardian article here.