Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

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Even during the global crisis which broke more famous financial institutions, the failure of Box Brothers was noisy. The private bank collapsed shortly after the arrest of Dame Philomela Box, Chief Executive Officer, on charges of fraudulent dealing. A warrant was also issued for her nephew, Colin Box. Press speculation that he had done a runner ended when his body was discovered in the boot of a burned-out Volvo on Havengore Island, Essex. Autopsy determined that Colin’s head had been sawn off and used as a football. No one has ever been charged with his murder, or those of two other bank officers found dead in the next six weeks.

Only after the CEO’s indictment could Box Brothers be called in print what it was, and always had been: the criminals’ bank. Founded in 1869, the family-owned business maintained premises in Moorgate, Gibraltar and Bermuda[1]. For nearly a century and a half, Box Brothers provided financial services (no questions asked) to law-breakers great and small. Their client list ranged from underworld gangs (and, from the 1960s on, terrorist cells) with enormous turnovers to conceal to lowly smash-and-grab merchants with bloodied cash deposits to make. As their still-live website euphemistically has it, Box Brothers’ twenty-first-century speciality was ‘offshore wealth management’ — which is to say, getting the loot out of the country. The house’s oldest service was the most confidential and secure storage facility in the City of London — which is to say, a box to keep the jewels or paintings (or, in several cases, people) out of sight until the heat died down.

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