Saddam Hussein stashes away billions in a London investment company. A young financial investigator and an Iraqi woman working in the company try to expose the scheme and track the money in Switzerland.

Ignatius has done careful research about the city of Geneva. His descriptions of the city are very accurate and give a good feeling of what it's like to sleep in a Geneva 5 star hotel to go to a bank the next day. Street names are most accurate, save for the 'Rue des Banques' which we think was inspired by Rue de la Corraterie. The author has obviously personally visited Geneva, although we doubt he has been past the reception room of a real Swiss bank.

The portrayal of the Swiss bank industry is, unfortunately, riddled with prejudices. We must remember that the author, Mr Ignatius, is a Whashington Post journalist who covers US international policy. He must know more politicians than businessmen and in his world, only crooked politicians have Swiss bank accounts. This is obviously untrue but the novel is permeated with half baked notions of Swiss banks being diligently involved in laundering funds for the most corrupt and venal men on the planet. According to the author, the only reason why people would put money in a Swiss bank is because the money is 'hot' and Swiss banks have become rich stealing the money that the world's corrupt kings and presidents have been shoveling money into Swiss banks for generations.

Geneva is seen as a century-old haven for corrupt politicians. Even the custom officials are in on it:

The passport officer rolled his eyes as if already knew the story. This was a city that assumed the worst about everyone. It had grown rich hiding money for Frenchmen who were cheating on their taxes, and later opened its arms, and bank vaults, to Africans and Asians, Arabs and Jews. An entire world of people with things to hide. And what was one more?

The financial investigator character worked for a Swiss bank for three years and resigned because his clients were, with few exceptions, corrupt and dishonest men whose chief goal was to hide their wealth from those who quite properly wanted to take it away.

All of this is obviously grossly incorrect and reflects a perception bred out of reading the few stories about Swiss banks that make it into major American newspapers.

One of the few interesting ideas about Swiss banking in the book is the possibility that some clients would use strawmen to invest money:

The most secure way to hold money is not to hold it at all. If I put it in a bank, it can be traced to me. But if someone else puts it in the bank for me, that is a different matter. It doesn't belong to me anymore. The address is not my address. So if I want to hide a billion dollars, my dear Sam, the best things I can do is to give it to you. It cannot be traced to me ever again. But if I trust you, I know that it is still mine forever.

Is this possible? This is an interesting question. Obviously, no bank today would accept money if it suspects the money belongs to some unnamed General or President. But it does not insult reason to think that a sufficiently prepared person could actually convince a bank to accept funds under his name, while they actually belong to a corrupt politician. It may be worth mentionning that Swiss banks nowadays use huge databases with the names of elected officials and their family in the entire world, to raise a flag if such a person or his relatives would approach the bank. They would immediately be considered a PEP, or Politically Exposed Person and be subjected to intensive scrutiny under the assumption that the money comes from corruption and hence the bank will not open a relationship.

The two Swiss banks mentioned are OBS (Organisation de Banques Suisses), with the last words mistakenly put in the plural and Crédit Mercier, a private bank run by a Maurice Mercier. The name looks credible enough for an English speaker, but in fact it does not make sense. We do have many banks called crédit something in Switzerland, but the word following 'crédit' is always an adjective, whereas here it's the name of a partner in a Swiss private bank. Furthermore, such banks are never called 'Crédit' since they all came into existence many decades before the first crédits mobiliers, those banks whose business was to invest the money on deposit in financial securities on their own account. So a good name for this bank would have been Mercier & Cie (Mercier & Co.) or at least Crédit Genevois (Geneva Credit Bank). Furthermore, Mr Mercier's first name Maurice would suggest a Jewish banker, some of which have owned and managed highly respected private banks in Geneva for centuries, but the last name is supposed to be that of an important Geneva private banking family because it's the bank's name as well. It does match. If the banker was Maurice Sarfati from the bank Sarfati & Co, that would work, or if his name was Barthélémy Mercier, this would sound like a blue blooded Calvinist father would give his child, in a bid to perpetuate their Protestant heritage. Not really important, but a person familiar with Swiss banks cannot help noticing it.

A part we liked a lot is the bank having an unlisted number, no sign on the building and a secret tunnel that lets famous clients of the Crédit Mercier bank exit the premises in the courtyard of a building in a different street. Many Swiss banks do actually have several entrances which are often used for that purpose, although we have never seen a tunnel - yet. We imagine the author Mr Ignatius entering a Swiss bank and posing as a potential client as part of his research, thinking about his fantasies of corrupt dictators while he grabs the internal phone directory:

Lina gazed out at this secret garden. It was evidently part of the mystique of Crédit Mercier. the building had been designed like a maze to protect the privacy of the bank's clients. Each visitor would be certain, as he sat in his personal conference room, that no other visitor would see him. The oil minister of Sharjah would never know that he shared the same bank as the finance minister from Peru. The chief of staff of the Kenyan army would never have to see the face of the speaker of the Russian parliament. They were brothers in secret. Lina sat down in the easy chair and wiated, anonymously, for the arrival of the only man who saw all the face.

The part where somebody hacks into a Swiss banks to try and steal money has never been seen in reality and we have no idea how that could be done. There have been no off-the-shelf Swiss numbered accounts sold by accountants to their clients for decades now.

The book makes for good reading although the plot becomes less and less credible at the end. Although we know as little about the CIA as Mr Ignatius seems to know about Swiss banks, we felt that the character of FATHER, a drunkard who tells his country's highest State secrets to civilians, was over the top and really difficult to believe.