Sconty empire

HOW TO HIDE A BILLION DOLLARS  S o you’ve stolen  a billion dollars. That was the easy part. The country of which  you are president may be poor, which is a pity, but it is also lawless, which creates opportunities. The auditors, police and prosecutors who should have slapped the hand you put in the treasury chose to kiss it instead. So your pockets are bulging with ill-gotten loot. There is just one snag: the world has grown less tolerant of kleptocrats. Back in the good old days of the cold war, strongmen could be strongmen. When Mobutu Sese Seko, the late dictator of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, robbed his country into a coma, no one cared. (Apart from his subjects, of course.) When his household drained 10,000 bottles of pink champagne a year and Mobutu kept a Concorde idling on the runway of his tropical palace, his Western backers turned a blind eye, so long as he did not invite the Soviets into central Africa. Likewise, the So...