For hundreds of years, the Swiss have maintained public neutrality. The country did not join the United Nations until 2002. Yet, almost since the end of the Dark Ages and inception of the modern borders of Europe, Switzerland has rented itself out for military and then banking purposes. When fiefdoms were fighting one another, the Swiss military was so adept at logistics the country leased armies of lancers to serve as impartial militiamen. Because the lancers had no formal allegiances, they came to be known as Free-Lancers. Get it?
But that same mentality stretched into lending money and resources to whatever ruler or despot wanted to pay for them. Thus begins the secret world of Swiss banking, wherein anyone, for the right price–take Hitler and his cronies, for example–could park their cash, wash their money to get around sanctions, or hide their loot. And why should Switzerland be the only country making money by maintaining special privileges for high-paying clients? The rest of the book is an exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, examination of free-zones, secret banks, and quasi-legal storerooms that subvert and obvert international borders and legal constrictions.