Money, lies and death: London's criminal underworld with Patrick Radden Keefe
5/6/202642 min
Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, is back asking questions of those in power. His new best-seller investigates the mysterious death of young Zac Brettler in the heart of London. What does it tell us about dark money, lies and corruption in this gilded city - now home to the world’s billionaires? And why were the police either unwilling or unable to provide his family with answers? We talk about identity, reinvention and oligarchs in his latest book, London Falling.
Later, Trump's Project Freedom in Hormuz ends on day one - has Trump capitulated or is a deal, finally, in sight?
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Clips
Showing 10 of 11Transcript preview
First 90 secondsPatrick Radden Keefe· Guest0:00
[digital swooshing] This is a Global Player original podcast. These two guys, one of them extremely dangerous, this guy Indian Dave, and also Akbar Shamji, these guys realize that they've, they've kind of been had. They've been conned.
Emily Maitlis· Host0:14
And the CCTV footage shows Zak in a state of frenzy.
Patrick Radden Keefe· Guest0:20
The police, in my view, really botched the investigation.
Emily Maitlis· Host0:23
And then we don't see what happens, but we know that he never leaves, and his body is found a few days later.
Patrick Radden Keefe· Guest0:29
[dramatic thud] Akbar, on that last evening, is texting another guy. He says, "I'm heating up knives and clearing up blood."
Emily Maitlis· Host0:41
I first met Patrick Radden Keefe a couple of years ago. He'd begun work on a book which, at that point, had no name. He was writing a story of which there was almost no record. It involved a young man, Zak Bretler, who in 2019 had fallen to his death off the balcony of a luxury London apartment. The more Patrick studied this death, the more mysterious it became. Zak was a much-loved middle-class kid from North London, who at a certain stage in his adolescence had begun to pass himself off as a Russian oligarch's son, moneyed, abandoned, orphaned, a million miles away from the child he really was. He began associating with high-powered businessmen and with dangerous criminals, men who believed in his story and in his wealth.