INSIDE THE BOOK
The Cartel Ledger follows the money through Escobar's cash mountains, Cali's corporate discipline, gold businesses and the banking controls that failed to keep drug money out. Submarines and tunnels get their turn. So do the accounts, invoices and institutions that make the spectacular part of the business possible.
Follow smugglers, money launderers, professional intermediaries and institutions explaining what their systems failed to notice. Watch the language change as the money travels. At one end there are sirens. At the other there is a statement expressing deep regret.
Then examine the other expensive operation: the war sold to the taxpayer. Budgets, seizures, arrests and another promise that this time the supply will stop. There is always a number available for the press conference. There is considerably less enthusiasm for asking who keeps getting paid.
I have an accountant, an aversion to scrutiny and a gift for making self-interest sound like professional advice. So I take a particular interest in the respectable end of an ugly transaction.
Everybody loves a monster with a mugshot. He makes the people processing the money look wonderfully dull. This book asks how much bullshit can fit between a public crackdown and a private payday.
The blood dries. The money keeps moving.