“Off the Books details how the world’s pre-eminent banking organization and, reputedly, the biggest foreign exchange trader, slithered last tax laws and monetary controls. Hutchison does a masterful job of drawing together documentary evidence… He recounts the story with a good grasp of how money and markets move, a talent for making the complex simple, yet explicit, and a refreshing devotion to documentation and attribution. All the while he relies on a swift narrative style. Off the Books makes good reading.”
Balancing the Books, by Robert Barker, Barron’s, 17 March 1986
“Through public documents, internal memorandums and personal interviews, Off the Books depicts a financial institution whose overpowering role as one of the world’s biggest foreign currency traders enabled it to operate with apparent disregard for local economies. Off the Books is useful for what it reveals about the underbelly of Citibank and about the difficulty of regulating – or probing malfeasance – in foreign currency transactions that are electronically zapped from one jurisdiction to another.”
David Diamond, The New York Times Book Review, 18 May 1986
“Off the Books has all the ingredients of a great novel: intrigue, late-night meetings in bars and restaurants in cities around the world, a whistleblower at the United States’s largest bank, front-page investigative stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times leading to Congressional investigations, frustrated and befuddled government officials around the world, allegations of a cover-up of a federal investigation, and, of course, money. Lots and lots of money. It is a story of millions of dollars whirling around the world at speeds faster than the speed of light. And to make it all the more interesting, it isn’t a novel. It’s a true story.”
Larry Kramer, International Herald Tribune, 5 May 1986
“Off the Books presents a sophisticated study of how one multinational – Citicorp – flaunted its sovereignty in the face of efforts by at least a half-dozen Western governments to wield some minor influence over how banks behaved within their borders. A Swiss-based financial reporter qualified to tackle this subject by virtue of previous writings about some of the century’s greatest crooks, Hutchison scrutinises Citi’s currency trading and documents a scandal that ruffled the bank.”
Peter G. Gosselin, Financial World
“Hutchison gives the inside story of the dangerous game of foreign exchange trading, of the major players like Citibank, and what happens when they become involved in ‘parking’, or manipulating huge amounts of money in questionable ways.”
Peter Freeman, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1986