Russian Oligarchs using UK fee paying schools

[Chocalata]

Is this really such a big thing as the papers make out? I quizzed friends with DC at boarding school and it really doesn't sound like there are many Russian children in their schools at all. I feel quite bad for any Russian children that are at the moment, it must be quite terrifying to be alone in a boarding school in another country, even if your parents are potentially money laundering and financially supporting an atrocious invasion.

Youre missing my point. Which is that ordinary and wealthy Russians who have never supported Putin shouldn't be made to pay for something they have never been part of. It was directed at all the 'ban all Russians' types. Id be prerry pissed off if the tables were turned and it was 'ban all British' because of BJ and Reed Moggs and all those types which I have never supported. I pay full taxes (a lot) and dont hide or launder money and i am sure there are wealthy Russian people in the Uk who do that too, as well as the Oligarchs. So i dont support blanket bans.

I mean where do you think all the Russian dissidents are?!

@chairbumg

Attacking a mosque after a terror attack is nothing like sanctions against oligarchs who are tied to the Kremlin. 🙄

Some people are VERY keen to draw that kind of equivalence, though. 🤔 Whoever could they be?

Yeah it's really weird

@Pennox

Youre missing my point. Which is that ordinary and wealthy Russians who have never supported Putin shouldn't be made to pay for something they have never been part of. It was directed at all the 'ban all Russians' types. Id be prerry pissed off if the tables were turned and it was 'ban all British' because of BJ and Reed Moggs and all those types which I have never supported. I pay full taxes (a lot) and dont hide or launder money and i am sure there are wealthy Russian people in the Uk who do that too, as well as the Oligarchs. So i dont support blanket bans.

I mean where do you think all the Russian dissidents are?!

I don’t think there’s any need to “ban all Russians”. We just need to look at the money laundering and visa aspects.

@ThymePoultice
Fox hunting is banned, yes. I would like to see trail hunting banned as it is clearly not being adhered to.

I'm not saying anyone on this thread is chairbumg
I'm just saying it is a concern of mine.
My dc go to a (state) school where there is a big mix of nationalities. Many of the children there have at least one parent who is originally from another country.
This includes children with Ukrainian parents, and children with Russian parents.
I've just been a bit careful with how we discuss the news at home (my dc are primary age) to make sure that they are informed in an age appropriate way, whilst being aware of the kind of nonsense that gets talked about on playgrounds.

@CovidCorvid What about those with British citizenship? It’s not illegal to keep both citizenships and not every person gets citizenship through investments.

[quote Chocalata]@ThymePoultice
Fox hunting is banned, yes. I would like to see trail hunting banned as it is clearly not being adhered to.[/quote]
No. You were saying, explicitly m, that you would like to see FOX HUNTING banned.

It’s this endless pivoting that makes your posting a bit

@SquishySquirmy

Most "wealthy" Russian parents do not have £££££££ and golden visas.

"Wealthy" is of course relative, but most of the Russians I know have been living in the UK a number of years (often decades) and have built lives and lifestyles here.
The wealthiest among the ones I know (and again, everyone's definition of "wealth" varies) are well off because they are part of a double income couple with jobs such as medical consultant, engineer, architect, maybe financial services.
ie, above average income but NOT mansion-in-Chelsea-and-a-super-yaght-rich.

The small minority (the elite of the elite) who do have golden visas have been welcomed into the UK. They are not just mates with Putin, they are friends with British senior politicians and our own elite (so I am not sure how school bursars can be held responsible for policing their wealth when the institutions actually responsible didn't). These people are the problem but they do NOT represent ordinary Russians in the UK.

It would be like an American assuming that as a British citizen, you must be pally with the queen.

I am scared of the knee-jerk racism that always emerges after a major world event.
Islamophobia after terrorist incidents.
A wave of anti-semitism after the Israeli government does something we disagree with.
In early 2020, there were racist attacks directed at Asian people because some knuckle draggers held random people personally responsible for Wuhan, solely on account of their ethnicity.
And now no doubt we'll see some entirely innocent Russians picked on by idiots who think they are Expressing solidarity with Ukraine, whereas in fact they are just stupid racist aresholes who couldn't find the place on a map.

At the very least, could we be careful about how we discuss things with our children?
Ie, blaming Putin and his cronies instead of demonising a whole nationality?

I agree we need to be careful not to slide into phobia and actions based on that.

I’m glad recent messaging was to Russian people who are against Putin too

Quite a few wealthy Russian children at our school. But no idea where their funds come from. How could anyone ever know for sure?

[quote Chocalata]@Pennox I totally agree with you. And presumably there are systems in place for bursars to spot potential money laundering, so I just don't see how this is a big problem.[/quote]
You are being naive OP. Private schools are charities, they aren’t subject to regulations like banks. And telling whether money that originated in Russia has been laundered is completely beyond the skills or resources of a bursar, even if were in the interests of the school for them dig deep. Our leading public schools were quite capable of price fixing to push up fees - 50 of them were caught at it just over a decade ago and many fined - and they are equally capable of accepting big donations with out asking unnecessary questions. They are businesses in a charity wrapper.

I live in London and can think of a major public school just down the road that has a nice new science block, due to Russian parent.

People are concerned about it, partly because leading public schools are world renowned institutions so having them take money that may have been laundered isn’t great. But also because London / The consecutive party / British high end society is awash with Russian money of unclear origins - it’s not just the schools, they are just a very visible example.

@SquishySquirmy
I agree that as parents we need to talk to our children in a considered way.
But in terms of potential oligarch’s child education we are talking about children at boarding schools. They don’t get as much parental input. Hopefully most houseparents have talked to the children, but I know my housemaster was rubbish at things like that and he had no idea what was actually going on in the dorms in terms of bullying.
My worry is that boarders read these newspaper headlines, assume the Russian child in their year is the son of an oligarch, and start low level bullying them.

@chairbumg

Attacking a mosque after a terror attack is nothing like sanctions against oligarchs who are tied to the Kremlin. 🙄

That is SO far away from the point I was making.

Block the money laundering.
Block payments coming direct from Russia, and indirect from Russia via shell companies etc.
Close the loopholes.
Impose the strictest financial sanctions.
These are all things I agree with.

But don't conflate all Russians in the UK with "oligarchs".
Even the Russians with kids in private schools are not all "oligarchs" (a few are).

That was my point.
And it's not completely ridiculous to worry that a few people (not on this thread) will respond to the invasion of Ukraine with racism against Russians? Because that is what idiots do?

@ThymePoultice
I would like to see fox hunting banned. Because the current law hasn’t effectively done it, has it. So it is till fox hunting. Even if it is called trail hunting.
What do you apply thyme poultice’s to? Humans or horses?

.. not to say by the way, that there aren’t more Russian parents with kids at UK schools who are just middle class etc.

But identifying the fact that many British
Institutions and businesses (including the Tory party) have a few questions asked attitude to Russian money is perfectly valid.

Wouldn’t worry about the kids at these schools by the way. Their are Russian kids at both my SCs schools - and the other kids are more than sophisticated enough to understand the difference between the kids and the place they come from.

What a meandering mess of disingenuousness this thread is.

@ThymePoultice
Well why waste your time here?

I’m starting to wonder.

I don't get how one can "wash" money by giving a donation to a school. Where does one get the clean money out the other side? Isn't that money laundering 101: you pick up clean money and bank it yourself?

The oligarch's offspring I taught at uni was from Harrow, and had fully absorbed the accent and mannerisms. And the tedious elitism. So definitely something that happens, but no idea about numbers.

I hope so Luredbyapomegranate !
You're probably right.

Maybe I shouldn't have posted on this thread... threads that touch on the subject of private school often seem to go a bit weird on here. (Maybe because "private school" conjures up different ideas to different people? Ie, to me I think of a typical £15k, £20k, per year day school. Still financially out of reach of most people, but attended by a mix of kids, a few very wealthy but many just well off/comfortable, professional types. Whereas to other people "private school" means a super elite boarding school inhabited by multi-millionaires. I imagine that the latter is where the oligarch's kids go, but most private schools are the former.)

As an unrelated aside, I have noticed an increase in apparently offshore posting to a UK HCP forum a couple of months ago then further increase from last week. Usually seeking to foster discord which I find insulting as UK GPs are able to generate enough of that against UK government health policy thank you very much, but in comedically tin eared ways. At the risk of coaching the posters, they almost always meander and eventually throw the kitchen sink 'kitchen utensils', starting in topical subjects then speak about other topics in unintendedly comedic ways - I'm sick of having to wear PPE for 18 hours straight without any break, seven days a week. When will my own doctor see me face to face. Almost as if someone had read the Daily Mail in translation. Haven't had fox hunting thrown in.

BTW, someone posting a speculation that one child in every private school would still constitute a large number of children doesn't then mean that is the number of children in question unless by coincidence.

@Avarua

I don't get how one can "wash" money by giving a donation to a school. Where does one get the clean money out the other side? Isn't that money laundering 101: you pick up clean money and bank it yourself?

The first stage of money laundering is placement where you introduce illicit funds into the legit economy. The benefit that they're getting from it is not necessarily clean money out the other side but the reputational impact / integration with UK society which legitimises their activities.

Perhaps more influence-buying than laundering then?

@Zilla1
I can promise you I am a UK resident! The fox hunting chat was a small anecdotal aside about children being bullied about something that their parents make them do. It got spun out of proportion because reading between the lines one of the posters is an advocate of illegal hunting and kept asking me to clarify my wording.
I cannot bear the Daily Mail so would not be seeking it out to read in translation even if I did live abroad.
I am interested in trying to discern the difference between newspaper headlines suggesting that schools are overflowing with oligarchs’ children, and reality. I was at boarding school myself but we didn’t have any Russians that I can remember and my children are at day school.
I am sorry you have had to deal with horrible posters. My mum was a single parent NHS GP and I grew up aware how much she sacrificed and how much her job meant to her, so I can only imagine how awful the last few months have been for you.