Great Britain refuses Russian money

The UK intends to close loopholes in its own legislation to prevent Russia from using the country's financial system to launder corrupt revenues.
21.05.2018
Kommersant
Origin source
The Committee on Foreign Relations of the British Parliament issued a report "Moscow Gold: Russian Corruption in the UK", in which he outlined his view on the further strategy of confrontation with Russia. The main tools of this struggle should be the adoption of additional anti-corruption laws and the disclosure of the registries of beneficiaries of companies registered in the British offshore jurisdictions.

The report of parliamentarians calls on the UK government to "impose sanctions on more individuals connected with the Kremlin and those responsible for gross violations of human rights ... to close the opportunities for Russia to issue sovereign debt obligations with the help of VTB's sanctioned bank and ... stop the" dirty money "in the UK." All this, according to parliamentarians, needs to be done, because, despite the sanctions imposed by the US and EU, "Putin (Putin) and his allies continue to hide their corrupt incomes in London."

British parliamentarians believe that with these revenues, Vladimir Putin "supports his campaign to destroy the rule-based international system, harms our allies, and also destroys the international network of mutual assistance that supports Britain's foreign policy." Deputies are worried that London is "not serious enough to repel President Putin's attacks."

The fight is proposed to be strengthened by measures of the law on combating money laundering, as well as "strengthening cooperation with overseas territories and crown lands". There, we recall, includes many offshore zones - for example, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Cayman and Virgin, popular with Russian businessmen. Parliamentarians "welcome the government's decision to help the overseas territories create a register of beneficiaries of companies registered there, accessible to the general public" until 2020.

The parliamentarians outlined the report's conclusions and proposals based on the testimony of a number of officials and experts, both British and Russian. Among them are Thomas Keating from the United Royal Institute for Defense Studies, journalist Luke Harding, chess player and opposition politician Garry Kasparov, anti-corruption activist Roman Borisovich and Vladimir Ashurkov, businessman, associate of Aleksei Navalny's policy and one of the founders of the Anti-Corruption Fund, forced to leave Russia in April 2014.

The authors of the report point to the frequent contradictory signals that London gives to Moscow. On the one hand, Great Britain imposed tough sanctions against individual Russians and sent 23 Russian diplomats, on the other hand it allows Gazprom to sell bonds on the London Stock Exchange for € 750 million, and En + to Oleg Deripaska for £ 1 billion in November 2017. The authors of the report acknowledge that the operations were legal, but they believe that they were committed thanks to "loopholes" in the legislation that must be covered up.

Professor Mark Galeotti, professor of the Institute of International Relations in Prague, calls on the British authorities "to be more aggressive and predatory in their approach to Moscow," since "Russia openly announced to us (Great Britain -" b ") a political war." The authors and experts of the report urge that the law on combating money laundering passing through the final stages be adopted more quickly and that a "list similar to Magnitsky's act" be added to it to punish not only those close to Vladimir Putin but also those who violate the rights rights in Russia. They also insist that Russia should lose the opportunity to use British jurisdictions to issue sovereign debt.

"As a nuclear state, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia remains one of the world's major players, which occupy an important place," the authors of the report summarize. "It can be a force that strengthens world security and stability, but instead of acting according to international rules, Putin's regime uses asymmetric methods to achieve its goals and uses "useful idiots" in the West to strengthen the effect of its propaganda. " Only a coherent and consistent strategy will help Great Britain and Western states to prevail, the report authors believe.

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