16

DARKMARKET

As the souped-up car rolled down the western edge of the Alps, the sun bounced off the crisp Mediterranean, reinforcing the sense that this was going to be a stupendous weekend. The group of twenty-something Scandinavian lads led by Recka, the king of Sweden's carders, turned off the A8 and onto the Grande Corniche highway before snaking down through the mountains to Monaco.

One of the smallest and most densely populated countries in the world, the principality had been drowning in its own glamour for most of the last century. In 1956 it set a gold standard for post-war global celebrity hysteria when one of Hollywood's most alluring princesses, Grace Kelly, joined a real royal family by marrying Crown Prince Rainier, heir to the Monégasque throne.

Now, exactly fifty years after Monaco's marriage of the century, a group of DarkMarketeers armed with a trove of rare plastic booty were preparing a brief raid on this temple of decadence. Soon after passing the border from France to Monaco, the first casinos hove into sight. These cash factories have been underwriting the principality's budget since the 1860s. The locals call them Monaco's wallet and they are the reason why the Monégasques pay no taxes. Why would they need to? A single room at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel, for example, costs $800 a night, and if the guests can afford that, they can obviously throw silly money into the casino vaults. The result – a surfeit of lucre all round.

The indigenous population thus bathes gently in the huge pools of