These sanctions will make little difference. The cash flows generated from oil, gas and other commodities are colossal. This is more so because that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a minority of people. The oligarchs.
The best way to launder that money is to buy things. Oli Garch doesn’t need much cash - even if though he only eats oysters and Japanese beef. He only needs one yacht, one football club and one private jet. What’s the point of having ten?
So by far the most of this money goes into an offshore company registered in Panama. The shareholders are two companies; one registered in Cyprus and the other in the UAE, run by local notaries. Cash from oil, gas and commodities each year gets sent to those companies and invested in a range of things from shares in Apple to artwork in France. For an oligarch we are talking several hundred millions of dollars a year, surplus cash to be reinvested under a tangled web of anonymity.
How do you sanction a company in a Caribbean island registered in the name of a local notary where there is no link to Oli? How do you even know the company holds assets in the first place? These islands and tax haven states often have no public register.
When you look at the Times Rich List, the £2bn attributed to Oli is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the best guess of the tangible things associated with him. The yacht, the jet, the house in St George’s and the villa in Cannes, plus £200m invested in a Russian TV station or a timber factory to explain how he pays to fill the jet with fuel and can pay for the oysters. But in the shadowy background, there is another $10bn spread across many different companies. These companies are untouchable. Is the US Navy going to send the marines to Panama to seize the accounting records of a company registered there? And what would it prove?