Fiction has played a prominent role in shedding light on dark corners. In January, the BBC began screening McMafia, about the son of an exiled Russian tycoon who leaves his job at Goldman Sachs to start his own London investment fund. He sets out with the best of intentions, but soon finds himself pressured into moving money for an Israeli crime boss.
McMafia became a byword for London’s reputation as a magnet for dark money, and it increased pressure for reform within Westminster. In March, the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the influential foreign affairs select committee, declared that money laundering was now a “foreign policy issue”.