Pyramid of Lies charts the meteoric rise and spectacular downfall of Greensill and his company. He had a simple idea - democratising supply chain finance - and disrupted a trillion dollar industry in the process. But a staid business model concealed dubious practices as Greensill made increasingly risky loans to fraudulent companies using other people's money.

And interestingly, as soon as he gets a role at Greensill Capital, which lends a lot of credibility to the firm to have a former Prime Minister working for you is really a stamp of approval. Why David even did it is really interesting, right? So I think what's the upside for him of his relationship with Greensill Capital: one, is potentially a huge payout. So he gets paid a decent salary, and he gets paid a good bonus, but he also gets options, which had they paid off, he would have got tens of millions of pounds. When I started to look into it based on this documentation I received, I realized Greensill was the story. And it didn't really take an awful lot of digging to figure that out. NATHAN HUNT: The book, once again, The Pyramid Of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal. Duncan, thank you for joining me today on the podcast. And Sanjeev's looking for somebody who lend them some money and the 2, they have this kind of symbiotic relationship. So much so that at one point, Sanjeev Gupta is a major shareholder in Greensill Capital. So the 2 become really kind of intertwined and they start to really lean on each other, right? Like Greensill can't really grow without the revenue it gets from Sanjeev Gupta's businesses. And Sanjeev Gupta's businesses known as the GFG Alliance, they can't really grow without the money that Greensill is providing to it.DUNCAN MAVIN: That is also a very, very good question. So Lex comes across the government. He makes his government connections from around about 2011. He had met a very senior former Civil Servant named Jeremy Heywood, when he was at Morgan Stanley. They both worked together there. At that point, Lex was a pretty junior guy and Jeremy Heywood was a very senior guy, very high-level Civil Servant who'd moved into the bank temporarily.

NATHAN HUNT: In the end, it was actually a small insurance company that collapsed the house of cards that was Greensill Capital. How did that come about?NATHAN HUNT: One of the strangest parts of the book for me was the -- and it's a minor point, but it was the fact that when Lex Greensill had attained his position in Downing Street, he nonetheless, also chose to misrepresent his relationship with the Obama administration in the United States. He apparently had been in a meeting in the White House on an occasion, but he turned that into sort of a formal advisory relationship. Why on earth would he lie about something that doesn't give him any additional benefit beyond the Downing Street relationship he already has? DUNCAN MAVIN: That's a great question. So I -- yes, you're right, I've been following this for probably about 4 years now, maybe a little longer than that. And at the time -- I've been a financial journalist for a long time. I was a chartered accountant before that. So just so you know where I'm coming from. But at the time, I wasn't writing an awful lot. I was doing a bit more editing and managing people. And a source -- a longtime source of mine came to me and said, hey, are you paying attention to this company called Greensill Capital? And I said, no, never heard of them.

Exercise due diligence in selecting investments and the people with whom you invest—in other words, do your homework. Pyramid of Lies charts the meteoric rise and spectacular downfall of Greensill and his company. He had a simple idea—democratising supply chain finance—and disrupted a trillion dollar industry in the process. But a staid business model concealed dubious practices as Greensill made increasingly risky loans to fraudulent companies using other people’s money.An epic true story of ambition, greed and hubris – the collapse of Greensill Capital is a billion pound scandal that shredded the reputation of a British Prime Minister. See also: Inside Jason Miller’s plan to turn the Big Lie into a big business – and a second term for Trump] What distinguishes the Greensill saga from other corporate scandals such as the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s or Robert Maxwell's misappropriation of pension funds is the way in which it encompasses, and taints, figures from the highest levels of politics and officialdom, most notably David Cameron and the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood.