The Washington Post reports that London is a "playground" for
Russian zillionaires:
For years, the moneyed streets of the British capital and its surroundings have been a really great place to hide if you’re a Kremlin-linked oligarch.
Russian millionaires and billionaires have bought up so much of wealthy areas like Belgravia in Central London that certain British neighborhoods have gained their own Soviet-inspired nicknames like “Londongrad” or “Red Square.” Activists gave “kleptocracy tours” of empty mansions suspected to be linked to the “London laundromat” for cleaning dirty money.
Much the same is true of New York City. So here's an idea. If we really want to put some pressure on Russia, the US and UK should limit tourist visas to, say, one week for all Russian residents. The oligarchs would no longer be able to spend half the year in their overseas mansions and they'd go howling to Putin. Ukraine would suddenly seem like a minor annoyance.
Would Putin retaliate? Sure. But who cares? Some tourists would be disappointed, and business folks might have to change their schedules. But they'd probably appreciate an ironclad excuse to spend less time in Russia anyway, so there's no harm there. And no Americans want to go to Russian universities or buy mansions in St. Petersburg.
Just a thought. But I suppose this will seem too extreme for all you namby pamby liberals who can't stand the idea of America showing the world who's boss. I'll bet Trump would have done it if he hadn't been cheated out of his election victory.
Reverse psychology doesn't work...unless you don't want the laundering to be hindered...probably angling for a nice palace in the City...hmmmm?
Ahh yes. Get the UK to stop money laundering? Good luck.
That might do more damage to their economy than cutting of natural gas does to Germany....
/s?
+1
What was the point of Brexit, other than keeping the City open to Russian money?
Brexit meant and means f-all for City being open to Russian money.
Brexit's only point was about internal English (not British, English) political manouevering and madness of certain little Englanders inside of the Conservative party.
It also removes a capitalist weight in the EU so they have a bit easier time facilitating pro-consumer moves.
Word salad.
It’s an interesting question but, in terms of being insulated from EU money laundering regulations, the city was doing much better with the UK inside and able to use its special privileges on the city’s behalf.
One of the really bizarre consequences of Brexit is that the UK gave up a whole host of formal and, more importantly, informal privileges that gave it genuinely outsized weight in opposing bank regulations and insulating the city and the financial/property/education sectors generally from more burdensome European banking regulations. In fact, if I remember correctly, the UK intervened exclusively to protect banks from being regulated and to allow the UK to continue as the worldwide center magnet for black money.
Indeed, much better.
UK inside of EU was even directly tactically useful for an oligarch, insofar as the Russians love their apartments in London and their villaas in Costa del Sol. Brexit inevitably is complicating a London based game
Covered extensively here. They'll just make up for the difference with money from the oil and drug cartels.
https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8
EEC money laundering crackdowns may have been the reason for BREXIT.
Go after all oligarchs, tax shelters and money laundering.
Oh...wait....
Brexit happened just to keep these people happy, would London hang them out for Ukraine?
too true...
Brexit certainly did not happen to keep Russian oligarchs happy, Brexit created inconveniences for using London.
Russian intelligence may have promoted the idea from an intelligence service desire to spread chaos, but certainly not for the convenience of oligarchs, idiotic Just so story....
Keeping European banking regulators out of London wasn't one of Farage's primary motivations?
No, not really. Regulation as to the relevant areas, money laundering etc are National purview, not ECB, and as UK was not Eurozone, generally not very relevant.
City interests were massively AGAINST Brexit as UK carve-outs and position in EU were near ideal for them.
Bizarro Left bank-oriented conspiracy mongering is completely wrong in re Brexit.
I had the impression it was a movement toward more integrated banking regulations that was a motivator for the right-wing crowd surrounding Farage and his backers, and Cambridge Analytica, and that guy whose name escapes me who made millions out of the privatization of the Soviet Union.
It's not conspiracy mongering if it actually is a conspiracy.
Your impression is conspiracy mongering. Its fundamentally unfounded and silly Left blithering based on poor understanding of both banking and how money was (and is still) flowing.
City had via UK carve outs quite the special position and now outside of EU, EU rules are a bigger inconvenience, not a lesser one.
No regulation literate City person was in favour of Brexit.
Farage and his band of deranged baboons are in another game.
So, --we're in agreement?
Are you trying to say it's not a conspiracy if it's legal?
No I am saying your impression is bollocks and ill-informed. Evidentally beyond your grasp.
Well, in that case you're a complete idiot who credulously believes whatever he hears after a few pints, because that's always how you get the real story.
As Lounsbury very cogently observes, the City of London was absolutely opposed to Brexit as it has threatened their place as the main European financial hub and also its place as the worldwide center for money laundering (which has probably been England’s principal economic engine for decades).
The thing that kept European banking regulators out of the City was the UK’s consistent interventions using the very significant (mostly informal) privileges originally negotiated by the Wicked Witch and which were sacrificed so that Englishmen could carry the traditional blue passports instead of the sissy red ones issued by the EU countries
It's not that it was the City, but a clique of right-wing personalities within it, social conservatives not being famous for appreciating consequences, except as schadenfreude.
I think that an accurate statement. But, in fairness, my guess is that none of these right wingers actually thought Brexit was a realistic possibility so they could posture without risk to their business interests. Kind of like with Boris—the dog who finally caught the car.
No, not a clique of right-wing from the City, a clique of deranged Farangist baboons.
Some with some City backgrounds, but they were and are not City people in the end any more than Trump is a Wall Streeter (rather than a vulgar Queens real-estate speculator pretending to be something else).
My dear City friends are decidely on the Right and the right-wing, but were absolutely anti-Brexit.
Brexit was in no way a City game. It was the game of vulgar Little Englanders
Farage has no associations with people who just really want to help out with Russian money?
?? Non sequitor.
Farage "associations" (whatever that means) or not with persons dealing in Russian money flows have precisely f-all to do with his Brexit idiocy. Farage's politics are Little England petit bourgeois populist nationalism. Irrelevant to Russian money or not.
And that's he's exactly the person people with Russian connections would be promoting.
Honestly do people never tell you you're thick as a brick? You should pay more attention to that part of what they're saying.
Personally, I’d hang the lot of them for an extra tea biscuit.
Do the property owners actually live there for more than a week at a time? I was always under the impression that property purchases of this sort were more about moving cash out of Russia or wherever and basically laundering it via pricey London real estate. So clamping down on visa would be irrelevant, but some serious tax and financial audits might be rather less trivial.
Yes, over the past years whole neighborhoods have basically been emptied. There’s nobody living in big chunks of Mayfair. A lot of the oligarchs and other criminals actually stay in hotels when they visit.
But what about their kids? There are finishing schools for the children of tres nouveau riche men to polish them up for Oxbridge. Don't think they'll be headed back to Mother Russia very soon.
https://youtu.be/rFUr9TN8DnI
They certainly would be if the UK was serious about sanctions against Russia. Right now, England isn’t just educating the children of oligarchs and gangsters, it’s also providing a place of safety and refuge from the dangers of the Russian mafia state.
Making these kids go back to Russia or to similar authoritarian jungle states would be a powerful incentive for the oligarchs and gangsters to curb Putin‘s excesses. Russia is probably one of the few places that’s truly vulnerable to sanctions.
I read this and I realize that this is what the left calls "standing up to Putin".
If you are serious about this you freeze the assets - change the locks on the houses, put the luxury cars in impound yards, put all valuable movable assets in the house into secure storage.
Then you demand proof of beneficial ownership and proof of where funds came from. Owners who cannot show they are separate from Putin's oligarchy and not holding for members of the oligarchy lose the assets which are auctioned off to pay damages and to provide funds for weapons for Ukraine.
If you are serious about this you do not worry about inconveniencing Westerners visiting Russia. Instead you order all Westerners out of Russia, warn them that all access to foreign funds may stop at any time without warning, that all flights to Western countries may be cancelled without warning, and that anyone who voluntarily stays in Russia and then becomes a hostage is on his own.
If you are serious about this you look at the Soviet intervention in the Korean War - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War#Soviet_air_intervention - and you say "Turn about is fair play." If Russian troops cross the Ukraine border they come under air attack from mysterious "Ukrainian" planes flown by US pilots. Any attempt by the Russians to fly any aircraft in Ukrainian air space get swatted down. Wounded Ukrainians are treated in US field hospitals in Ukraine and sophisticated NATO hospitals in NATO countries.
Beneficial ownership is a proper response, but US and NATO playing Little Green Men games is foolishly aping Russian games. And would be done poorly.
NATO rather more easily can provide the Ukraine with defence, advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank systems that would cause the Russians rather great pain
No LGMs. We can be quite open about what we are doing. What is Putin going to do about it? Declare war? Invade Ukraine?
And what does "the left" have to do with this? It's right-wing icon Trump who licked Putin's ass for four years, including his plan to pull U.S. troops out of Germany (reversed by Biden).
The US military has no issue blowing kids to bits with drone strikes. And namby Pamby liberals are just fine with it. How about we do the same to Russian billionaires?
Anyway… the end of the Democrats controlling congress is at hand. So much for that Supreme Court nominee.
“Senator Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, suffered a stroke last week and is expected to make a full recovery, his chief of staff said on Tuesday.” Uh huh.
Do you really think that Michelle Grisham can't appoint a replacement in about two weeks? You aren't across the goal line yet, pieza de mierda. Spiking the ball where you're running is still a fumble.
Perhaps he should resign now. I don't want democrats to lose so I'm not spiking the ball at all. I just thought it was an interesting development.
You are right, though, I didn't check to see if the governor was a democrat. So sorry.
She's also related to the Senator; her middle name is his surname.
Besides, it's an election year, and Supreme Court nominations should not occur during an election year.
The guy's 49 years old. I'd bet on him making a full recovery. How many months will it be before he's back voting? That's another question. :/
I used to work for a real estate investment company. We needed to replace our GP. So we looked for a new one. The top 4 bidders were all Russian.
Why? If you want to keep your money safe from Putin, you need to get it to a place where he can't steal it from you. US and UK real estate are the best places.
The Russians who own a lot of real estate in NY or London are more likely to be scared of Putin than be people Putin cares about.
So restricting those rich Russians might not have too much impact on Putin.
so...Panama Papers review then?
Actually, you’ve put your finger on exactly why Russia is uniquely vulnerable to harsh economic sanctions. The oligarchs and other major criminals cannot keep their wealth or their families in Russia because it is a mafia state. Nothing and no one is safe in Russia; even Putin keeps his family and much of his wealth in the west.
Russia has only the law if the jungle. For all of our faults, the west has the rule of law. Winners generally get to keep what they’ve won whereas in Russia a man can keep only what he can personally defend every minute of every day; it’s why there’s so few retired mafia bosses.
Minor quibble. Putting aside the excesses of civil forfeiture statutes, I agree that the U.S., for the most part, still hews to the "rule of law" in the sense of not confiscating lawfully-earned private assets. But I'd note that the current Supreme Court is gleefully demonstrating that, in all other respects, the "rule of law" can be changed, at their complete whim, to whatever the hell they feel like it should be, notwithstanding any contrary language in the constitution, statutes, regulations, and past judicial precedents.
That’s certainly true. As we drift towards authoritarianism it’s only natural that we should gradually develop the characteristics of such a society, which includes insecurity about one’s self and possessions.
A reason indeed why when one is on Costa Del Sol, Marbella is plastered with Russian language adverts for real estate attorneys and services.
City accounts, Marbella villas..... best of both worlds, all out of reach of Mr Putin should one day one run afoul of his security service.
Yes, that’s Putin’s Achilles Heel. If the other oligarchs and organized crime groups were faced with genuine sanctions that cut them off from the west, that would be an terrifying and probably intolerable situation. Their wealth and their families would be forced back to Russia where they’d always be a risk.
For Putin, there’d no “golden parachute” and good life as an exile in France if things went wrong. He’d be killed, along with his family. Really strong sanctions (perhaps even permanent decoupling from the west) would leave Putin staring into the abyss.
US and UK markets for banking services, London pre Brexit was brilliant for a platform, not only for London RE, as demand driving demand, but also for cleaning flows to Marbella, etc.
US should be similar although US being of a size that NY has Florida, California, etc.
However as Mitch rightly highlights, any person not Putin is afraid of Putin as it merely takes becoming slightly inconvenient for you to lose all.
Having W. European assets is an insurance policy.
And no Americans want to go to Russian universities or buy mansions in St. Petersburg.
I don't know about the mansion part, but I'll politely disagree with the university part. American students interested in studying Russia and Russian history/culture do indeed want to study at Russian universities, and this is getting more difficult. The government recently deemed a highly-regarded study abroad program run by Bard College in St. Petersburg "undesirable" and pulled its permits to operate. (Bard suspects it was the college's connections to George Soros) Russian scientists, musicians, and artists regularly collaborate with Western scholars on a wide range of projects, often providing them with one of the few avenues for pursuing research or creative work not subject to Kremlin censors.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do something about the ability of Russian oligarchs to park their ill-gotten gains in London and elsewhere (I'm looking at *you*, Trump Org), but let's not be so glib about the blowback this might create.
I might be interested in a mansion in St. Petersburg if the the price was right but to be honest, I never really thought about it. What's the going rate for servants in Russia these days? Because if you are going to have a mansion you've got to have servants, right? [OK, I checked, we are looking at $3m or so, so the price isn't right]
I would think Russian oligarchs would be able to obtain passports fro the remaining Russian satellites and perhaps even a few other countries. So don’t think the idea of limiting “Russians” to one week would be a significant hardship for them.
Just impose visa requirements for Russian nationals and an obligation to disclose dual nationality. That way, they either declare that they’re Russians or we can lock them up with genuinely minimal investigation.
Also, for assets, remember that the proposals are to force declarations of beneficial interest and to require Russian nationals to repatriate bank or securities to Russia and dispose of real assets in a very limited amount of time. If we made forfeiture of assets with undeclared beneficial ownership, we could effectively defeat hiding assets in trusts or corporations.
Same in the fancy pants LA suburb of San Marino for the Chinese. Full of big houses owned by Chinese but rarely lived in. The real estate agents hate it because empty houses reduce local real estate prices and undercut local stores and restaurants.
Property tax control!
Personally, I'm all for huge taxes on these folks, along with the limited visiter visa. Force them out and sell the properties outright, to someone else. Canada has a similar problem with China wealthy owning and not living in huge mansions. Greed is the bottom line here. Everyone wants a slice of the wealthy pie.
It’s more than just greed. China (and, as we’re seeing, Hong Kong) are autocratic societies and therefore it’s difficult for those who have acquired any level of wealth to feel comfortable and secure about their futures. Basically, in an autocracy or oligarchy, everyone is like the fiddler on the roof.
The natural inclination is to put some of one’s wealth outside of the country and away from the grasp of more powerful or better connected people who might covet those things. And in authoritarian states, power is always in flux: ordinary people are vulnerable to the better connected and even the people in power can never feel genuinely safe because there’s always hungry Young Turks probing for any sign of weakness or vulnerability.
So, if you are making money in China or Russia, the question is where to put it where it will be both safe and still hold its value. Real property has traditionally had those desired characteristics. And, if you look for example at the Trump Organization, the legal systems in the west are extremely accommodating and allow total secrecy about ownership. So, once banking connections are secured, real property is the natural magnet for both scared money and black money.
What we’ve been seeing in the past decades is that black and scared money seeking to use property as a store of value (as opposed to a place to life) has been flooding into the same high end neighborhoods and changing their character in ways that people who live in those cities find profoundly disturbing.
I'll bet Trump would have done it if he hadn't been cheated out of his election victory.
Huh? Trump do something that Vlad doesn't like? Do two false statements in one sentence make it a double negative and hence true?
Sarcasm alert failure.
The first thing Ukrainians who led the Maidan coup did upon achieving political power was outlaw the speaking of Russian by the significant population of ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens. Drum relies on this type of oppression to deal with the resistance to the fascist NATO buildup of offensive arms and soldiers on Russia's western border but it only affects a tiny portion of Russians. Adopting the policies Clinton and Albright used against Iraqis would have caused average Russians much more pain and grief, which is more appealing to Democratic liberals.
Russia has attacked us and interfered with our elections. My country is already at war with Russia, albeit something of a repetition of the previous "long twilight struggle". We've never taken any reprisals and that's emboldened them.
Whatever the Ukrainians did is unimportant to me. It's a binary choice: Either we aid them in supporting our mutual enemy or their resources will be added to those of Russia and we will be worse off. The die is cast; we're at war with Russian and there's no middle ground at this point.
> So here's an idea. If we really want to put some pressure on Russia, the US and UK should limit tourist visas to, say, one week for all Russian residents. The oligarchs would no longer be able to spend half the year in their overseas mansions and they'd go howling to Putin.
If you do that, do you know who would be really happy? Putin. Oligarchs have no power over Putin. If they go to him to complain, Putin would probably tell them that "I told you you cannot trust the west". As a matter of fact, Putin has been asking wealthy Russians to bring their money back to Russia and put their kids in Russian schools (instead of Swiss or UK schools). If the west sanctions Russian rich (money, visas, etc.) in the west, the happiest person would be Putin. Hahaha.
I think we ought to put the NSA on the task of stealing oligarch money wherever it is stashed away and let them know they can have it back as soon as Putin is gone. Bonus point: it also sends a lesson about fucking with our elections. We can hack too.
I think that's way too complicated. We can legally impound most of it because we've already got most of it in NATO countries—the property, the bank accounts, yachts, and the artworks, everything they own is seizable. And by using disclosure requirement of beneficial ownership combined with forfeiture as the penalty, we can probably keep most of it, too.
And then we need to deport and permanently exclude Russian nationals so oligarchs and their families have to live in Russia, cut them off from all banking connections and SWIFT, and block the internet and telephone lines to and from Russia.
I think that would do as a reprisal for their attacks on us during the elections. If they keep screwing with us, then we could impose more drastic sanctions.