Ministers accused of failing to stem flow of Russian ‘dirty money’ into UK
Britain’s efforts to halt the flow of Russian “dirty money” into the UK have been called into question in the aftermath of the threat by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, to hit Kremlin-linked oligarchs with economic sanctions if Ukraine is attacked.
Labour and anti-corruption campaigners this week accused the government of failing to curtail Russian wealth and influence in Britain, despite years of provocative actions from the Kremlin.
“We’ve seen Russia engage in assassinations and human rights abuses, annexations and invasions – but it has taken 100,000 Russian troops at the border to push Britain towards a change of policy,” said James Nixey, a director at the Chatham House thinktank, which recently published a paper on the UK’s kleptocracy problem.
Truss would not spell out who might be targeted, partly for legal reasons, but she told MPs it could include “those who own or control” companies that have economic or strategic significance to the Russian state.
Roman Borisovich, an anti-corruption campaigner, who runs “kleptocracy tours” highlighting Russian oligarch-owned properties in London, said Truss’s threat sent out the opposite signal. Because sanctions would come only in the event of an invasion, the implied message was, he said, “play nice, you are welcome to come with your stolen loot”.
As fortunes were made following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian elites, who owe their wealth to an all-powerful Kremlin, have been eager to move money from home. So vast is the flight of capital it has been estimated that Russians hold as much as $1tn in wealth abroad, according to the Atlantic Council thinktank.
Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, believes that 150 properties, mostly luxury mansions in
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