It is likely that, for the first time in his political career, Boris Johnson has bet not so much on the winning side as on the right side of history. The British Prime Minister has been in recent weeks the necessary ally for Washington and once again a faithful one for Brussels. He has played a key role in the preventive strategy of revealing to the world the forecasts of his intelligence services, which the brutal invasion of Ukraine ordered by Vladimir Putin has proven correct. And he has bet hard, and fast, to impose harsh economic sanctions on the financial network and oligarchs that back the Russian president.
But the rhetoric churchillian deployed these days by the conservative politician, finally faced with a historical challenge comparable to those faced by his vital hero, will not be enough to straighten out the original sin that underlies this crisis: London has been for years —Londongrad, as it has become call—the paradise and refuge of the money of Russian mafias and billionaires, many of them allies of Putin.
“Russian oligarchs have always considered the UK a favorable destination for their money. The key to London’s appeal was the operation of the investor visa program [los llamados visados de oro para los que trajeran consigo dos millones de libras esterlinas, o unos 2,3 millones de euros], together with a light and limited legal regulation. The city’s thriving capital and property markets offered solid investment opportunities,” said the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, in July 2020, in a devastating report simply titled Russia.
Masked interests
“The influx of Russian money has fueled the growth of an entire industry of enablers – individuals and organizations that manage and promote the interests of Russia’s elites in the UK. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, and public relations professionals have all played a role, knowingly or unknowingly, in leveraging Russian influence, often linked to furthering the evil interests of the Russian government,” the report concluded. “And as a consequence of all that,” said William Browder, founder of Hermitage Capital Management (an investment consultant specializing in the Russian stock market), in its appearance before the deputies of the Commission, “from the British side we have to deal with Russian criminal interests disguised as interests of the Russian Government, and with Kremlin interests disguised under the interests of Western intermediaries.
It is a sin shared by Conservatives and Labour. In 2008, Gordon Brown’s Labor government, suffocated like the rest of the world by the financial crisis, introduced a system of facilitating visas and obtaining British nationality for those who brought their fortunes to the country. An investment of two million pounds (2.4 million euros) in a UK company would reduce the entire process to five years; three years if the contribution was five million pounds; only two years if it exceeded ten million.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
In perspective, the period between 2008 and 2015 was baptized the “period of blind faith”. Some 3,000 individuals, including more than 700 Russian citizens, joined the program with little or no background checks. Financial institutions took the applicant’s legitimacy for granted, because he had already obtained his visa. And the Government, in turn, assumed that it was the banks that ensured that everything was correct and complied with the due checks. “Ideal mechanisms were offered to recycle illegal finances through what became known as the laundry London,” the Intelligence and Security Commission said. “Russian influence in the UK became the ‘new normal,’ and many of these citizens had very close ties to Putin, and were well integrated into the social and business scene, which accepted them because of their wealth.”
As of 2015, thanks mainly to a report by the organization Transparency International that exposed money laundering strategies through the visa program, entry conditions were slightly toughened: any applicant had to first open a bank account in the United Kingdom Kingdom ―which automatically activated verification mechanisms― and the Ministry of the Interior reserved the prerogative to check criminal records. Not all Russian citizens who came to the UK were linked to crime or had close ties to the Russian president. But they all came under suspicion in 2018, in response to the Salisbury attempted murder of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
The Kremlin took its mafia practices to British territory. Theresa May’s government forced the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats and brought the relationship between the two countries to its lowest hours. He ordered an exhaustive report on those more than 700 Russians who had settled in the country between 2008 and 2015. It was never published, and despite the fact that the figures were lowered, the United Kingdom, as the parliamentary commission denounced, continued “receiving the oligarchs with open arms”. In 2021 alone, of the almost 800 visas granted to investors, 82 were for Russian citizens.
Interior Minister Priti Patel announced this week, as measures in response to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine began to unfold, that she had ordered the total cancellation of the visa program in exchange for investment. The most critical opposition deputies, who have been denouncing the situation for years, such as Labor Party member Chris Bryan or Liberal Democrat Layla Moran, called for more measures and a review of the past. “Closing the doors to Putin’s cronies is not enough. Many of them have already entered, without anyone asking them anything. The Government must now publish the report on all those who obtained visas”, Moran claimed.
Boris Johnson announced in his appearance on Wednesday before the House of Commons the will to block assets and persecute a list of almost 100 Russian individuals and entities, and to toughen the laws against economic crime with a battery of up to ten new proposals. The reality is that the legal and social armor acquired by the oligarchs in London makes it very difficult and costly to go after them. The figures speak for themselves: until December last year, the British Government imposed sanctions on 180 Russian citizens and 48 companies.
According to the Financial Sanctions Implementation Office, just over €24 million in fines have been collected since 2016. The total value of financial violations recorded in the 2019-2020 period was more than one billion. “The British Government has placed the fight against organized crime at the center of its foreign policy strategy,” the prestigious think tank warned last December. Chatham House in a report titled The UK Kleptocracy Problem, “but it has failed to detect the intimate connections between UK society and its institutions with the elites of the kleptocratic states”. And Russia is at the head of them all.
The oligarch Abramovich resigns as the administrator of Chelsea FC
In times of turbulence, keep a low profile. The oligarch Roman Abramóvich, always positioned in favor of Vladimir Putin, announced this Saturday that he will no longer be in the front row in the management of the soccer club that he has owned for twenty years, Chelsea FC. “I have always seen my role as that of custodian of the club, to ensure that it was always as successful as it is today, as we continue to build on its future. And without ceasing to have a positive intervention in our communities, ”the sports entity announced in a statement. “I have always made my decisions with the interests of the club in my heart. I remain committed to those values. That is why today I have decided to hand over the administration of the club to the trustees of the Chelsea Charitable Foundation. I think that, at the current times, they are in a better position to look after the interests of the club, the players, the staff and the fans.”
Abramóvich’s position as owner of the team had been seriously questioned in recent days, after the Johnson government decided to act against Russian individuals and entities linked or close to Vladimir Putin. The Labor deputy, Chris Bryant, had demanded that the Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, subject Abramovic to a tight control.
Many consider him the last survivor of the Russian oligarchs. The only one who has managed to maintain a low profile and a good relationship with the almighty Putin. With no political ambitions to pose a threat to the Kremlin dweller, his only rise to “power” was the 2003 purchase of Chelsea. According to various media, he used the profits obtained after selling a significant stake in the Russian airline Aeroflot. He poured millions of pounds into the club, filled it with star signings and attracted the most coveted manager of the moment, José Mourinho. Five English league titles and a Champions League in 2012 against Bayern Munich. Eighteen years leading a team that made Abramóvich a familiar face for the English. Not wanted, however, beyond devoted fans. The growing tension between London and Moscow, which reached its peak after the assassination attempt, in the town of Salisbury, of the double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018, made things complicated for the tycoon, who began a period of public seclusion, and it was no longer easy to see him smile in the box at Stamford Bridge. In the same year, Abramovich gave up his attempt to renew his British visa and acquired Israeli nationality.
Follow all the international information in Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
#London #rethinks #traditional #permissiveness #Russian #money