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Hunt the banker : the confessions of a Russian ex-oligarch / Alexander Lebedev.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: London, England : Quiller Publishing Ltd, 2019Description: 255 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781846893032
  • 1846893038
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Summary: Hunt the Banker is a memoir of Lebedev's own hair-raising experiences as someone who aspires to show that an 'honest banker' is not an oxymoron. There is the thread of a whodunit as his attempts at constructive and charitable business enterprises are systematically torpedoed by a person or persons unknown.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Biographies Davis (Central) Library Biographies Biographies B LEB Available T00827187
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Alexander Lebedev is best known as the Russian businessman and public figure who bought the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers in the UK. A former KGB intelligence officer in the USSR's London Embassy, his book covers the years from his birth in 1959 to 2016.

Written in a wry and humorous manner, the book is mainly a memoir of Lebedev's own hair-raising experiences as someone who aspires to show that an 'honest banker' is not an oxymoron. There is the thread of a whodunit as his attempts at constructive and charitable business enterprises are systematically torpedoed by a person or persons unknown. He describes the dirty tricks used against him and the attempt to assassinate him and details how the Russian and international political and business elite live.

Lebedev openly tells of his relations with leading politicians, businessmen and cultural figures in Russia and abroad, and investigates corruption scandals, dodgy multi-billion-dollar deals and contract killings. A comical episode on how he faced five years of imprisonment for a minor fracas during a television talk show, and how world show business stars (Elton John, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, John Malkovich, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry) rallied to his defence. He describes in detail how and why he became involved with two prominent UK newspapers.

Lebedev reveals his access to inside sources of information, with policemen and secret policemen slipping him memoirs and transcripts of episodes which would otherwise have remained unknown. It is ultimately a portrait of a political system which ensures that genuine attempts to improve the fortunes of his country and its citizens are built on sand.

Hunt the Banker is a memoir of Lebedev's own hair-raising experiences as someone who aspires to show that an 'honest banker' is not an oxymoron. There is the thread of a whodunit as his attempts at constructive and charitable business enterprises are systematically torpedoed by a person or persons unknown.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Preface: What Is the Third Colonialism? (p. 9)
  • Money can't buy you happiness
  • Black holes of the world economy
  • The evolution of robbery
  • Part I 'A Person Resembling the Prosecutor General', and a Bunch of Gangsters
  • 1 Allow Me to Introduce Myself... (p. 25)
  • We have all learned step by step
  • No cloak, no dagger
  • How to make a billion while retaining your integrity
  • 2 The Xerox Paper Box (p. 39)
  • 'Choose or Lose!'
  • A pyramid for Yeltsin
  • 3 Nothing Personal, Just Business (p. 47)
  • More banks: some good, some less good
  • Sleight of hand and just plain fraud
  • 4 Operation Boar on the Run (p. 55)
  • Money, especially tainted money prefers stillness
  • National Reserve Bank under bombardment
  • Enter the Tormentors
  • Pioneers of black PR
  • 5 In the Crosshairs (p. 73)
  • 6 Werewolves in White Uniforms (p. 91)
  • A leviathan against the Bank
  • Cui prodest? (Who benefits?)
  • 7 Nothing Secret That Shall Not Be Made Manifest (p. 101)
  • The aberration of the default
  • 'Rest in peace, dear comrade. Our suspicions proved unfounded'
  • Moskva the Golden
  • Part II The New Hunting Season: Ten Years On
  • 8 Learning from Mistakes (p. 115)
  • The Promised Land of Crimea, One's personal wool and the state's wool
  • The Blue Wings crash
  • 9 Déjà Vu (p. 127)
  • Masked Performance: the favourite genre of the stioviki
  • Whatever happened to Russian Capital?
  • Redirecting the finger of suspicion
  • Innocent as charged
  • Banker gangsters: crime without punishment
  • 10 A Financial Black Magic Performance, and How It Was Done (p. 143)
  • How Unified Energy System was taken to the cleaners
  • Aviaprom is bled dry
  • Setting the standard: the tale of Mezhprombank
  • How to launder a trillion dollars in the West
  • 11 'In Compliance with the Instructions of the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation...' (p. 157)
  • The NTV Show: an unexpected brush with the turbulent Mr Polonsky
  • Evening TV stops being soporific
  • A hooligan 'motivated by political and religious hatred'
  • Advocates and acrobats
  • 12 Faithful to the Legacy of Dr Goebbels (p. 179)
  • A present for the New Year
  • Neither in Heaven nor on Earth
  • The Ukrainian Front
  • 'Nazi' and 'national-traitor' in the same breath
  • Below the belt
  • Inside the information war
  • 'Get 'im Out!'
  • 13 A Courtroom Farce (p. 219)
  • The 'Polonsky Case': a U-turn
  • Disrespecting society
  • Bring down the curtain
  • 14 From Popovka to Monaco-an Epilogue (p. 245)
  • Bye-bye, Forbes!
  • My Manifesto

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