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.

Some boarding schools have to limit SE Asian and Eastern European admissions in order to maintain the English boarding school feel.

[quote Chocalata]@HundredMilesAnHour
No I do understand what you explained- I was simply saying that had I been pushed to say what I imagined happened (before you taught me otherwise) I might have imagined that there was an international list of known oligarchs with laundering history that could be accessed by schools - sort of financial version of sex offenders list. But you made very clear that those people are able to slip their activities past the experts, so no way would a one man band bursar office in Berkshire spot it! Like I said I have no expericence or understanding of these things![/quote]
@Chocalata I hope I didn't make you feel bad. That wasn't my intention. Money laundering is incredibly sophisticated these days and £millions are spent trying to prevent it - just as the criminals also spent millions trying to find new ways around it. It's not like you see on TV where the 'bad guys' buy a cash-based business such as a dry cleaners and pay all their 'bad' money into the dry cleaner's bank account and hey presto, the money is clean.

(I work in Financial Services and I'm a former Money Laundering Reporting Officer i.e. someone who investigates reports made of suspected suspicious banking activity).

@HundredMilesAnHour
You didn’t make me feel bad at all you were perfectly polite and helpful and I have learnt lots from your posts which was my aim. I hate not understanding how things work when they are in the headlines!

I can clearly see the issues for schools.
I suppose that even if they can’t actually check on money crime themselves, they could probably have worked out with a little straightforward research who Putin’s known cronies were and not let their children in to their schools on a moral basis? Even for a new science block?

Hopefully the government will move to draw up the list of Putin’s cronies op and ensure their children are no longer allowed to attend UK schools.

That’s how sanctions work - there are consequences, even for children. But at least less serious for the children of Putin’s henchmen than being a child in Ukraine right now.

@Donotgogentle let’s hope so. But the schools could have done this themselves I suspect, there is a lot of information about his cronies that can be accessed. I don’t think that they were innocent in this mess at all, they could have turned these children away.
Utterly awful to be a child in Ukraine. I am a Brownie leader and we are going to get the girls to light candles for the Ukrainian Guides at our meeting this week and try and think of someways to help.
A friend was just telling me that she has a friend who has had to rush back there as she had left her children with her parents to come and sort visas. Can’t imagine being that mum trying to get back to her children right now.

I think economic sanctions in respect of Russia’s actions in Ukraine are a national policy issue though and should be dealt with at a government level. I can’t see individual schools can really make that call.

And of course it can’t be on the basis of nationality. Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London on Putin’s orders, is a good example of how many Russians in the UK are fleeing the regime.

My children were at a school with a lot of perfectly lovely Russian children. Agree absolutely no fault of the children and hopefully they are being educated to be open minded
But I actually think that they should be asked to leave at this point. On the basis of not accepting Russian financial input.
Not through any fault of them and their parents but it seems like the only way to bring down putin is to encourage his fellow countrymen to take him down. With things as serious as they are surely anything that could go some way to help that can only be a good thing. We all fight like tigers for our kids and seems a good way to concentrate the mind
Yes it’s unfair and unkind but just watch the news film with innocent Ukrainian children suffering a much worse fate than being suspended from school.

@Donotgogentle schools can’t be in charge of sanctions no, but they have always been in charge of admissions, and they have had choice in that, and they must have known that some of the Russian families they invited to attend had bad reputations?

Tbh I’m less bothered by the schools’ routine admissions policies.

But economic sanctions against Putin are very important at this point and if that affects the children of those supporting his regime then so be it.

@Donotgogentle
I agree sanctions are very important at this point. But they are very late and it isn’t hard to look back and think that these schools ignored a choice they had to take in these children who will now need to be sent away from schools they are probably happy with.
So, looking forward,will schools be more ethical in who they let in?

Not late in relation to the invasion of Ukraine but yes, I completely agree, sanctions should have been imposed when it was found Putin was implicated in the murder of Litvinenko.

@Lolabalola it is hard for them isn’t it, but I suspect it would be better for them to go home, for their own mental health as much as anything. Shame they are pawns in this though, and wrong if the schools to take on the children of oligarchs in the first place.

@Donotgogentle I agree should have been much earlier.

@Donotgogentle

Tbh I’m less bothered by the schools’ routine admissions policies.

But economic sanctions against Putin are very important at this point and if that affects the children of those supporting his regime then so be it.

Totally. While I do have sympathy for innocent Russian children I have more sympathy for the Ukrainian children currently being displaced and shelled. I think they’re having a tougher time.

Many of these children and their parents are British citizens. Parents came as high net worth investors and could obtain citizenship after five years residence.

@CovidCorvid
Completely agree. I wouldn’t wish any type of suffering on any child, but if one milder suffering can save the more horrific one, then that is an easy moral equation.
Has Boris said these children will definitely have to leave the school?
Is it all Russian children that he is sanctioning or just the ones that are known to come from oligarch families?
Will they have to have their fees reimbursed?
Will it be safe for them to travel home?
Will the schools suffer financially if they lose a tranche of large boarding fees mid year or will they be reimbursed by the government?

@Kilimanjaro97 I don’t realise that. Does that mean they are not subject to sanctions? Will schools be unable to take them off their roll as part of sanctions if they are citizens?

Didn’t!

@Chocalata

A British citizen is a British citizen so can not be sanctioned on the grounds they hold another citizenship unless they commit some terrible crime (eg those who joined ISIS) and even then it is not straightforward.

Most Russian oligarchs will have other non Russian citizenships eg British because they have been resident here for a while. Other favourites are Maltese/Cypriot/Greek or Austrian. They will all be covered by the Brexit continuing residence agreements. No way they can be removed

The Russian children in UK without a second citizenship will not be the off spring of the big oligarchs with close links to Putin. Much more likely to be the children of the aspirational middle classes.

In some cases, how will they get home, with no flights yo Russia? I know of at least 2 Ukrainian children who board in the IK who went home for half term and have not returned as yet.

Plus, there is an issue of bullying. Schools have a duty of care and can't allow other children, however well motivated, to attack children for their nationality or their country's actions.

What will happen to these many hundreds of children, trapped for from home in a country where their parents are the enemy.

We need to be very careful about whipping up nastiness as it is really not their fault, whoever their parents are.,

@Kilimanjaro97
So many of those oligarchs might avoid all kinds of sanctions? They talk of taking houses and removing children from schools but they won’t be able to do that if most of the high level Putin cronies are British citizens?

I doubt any fee-paying school will agree to take a child off-roll without financial compensation. They are businesses, first and foremost. Boris/Rishi will need to 'help out to kick out'.

@Wartywart I think you could get a job in government comms with that catchphrase!

This makes me uncomfortable. Reminds me of Japanese prison camps in California during WWII, in which ordinary Japanese/American citizens were incarcerated. OK we're not imprisoning people (yet) but we are putting pressure on people who are living in this country and have nothing to do with the war.

The government has to respect the law.

UK law allows for the seizure of UK based assets from anybody ( British or not) if it can be shown that they were obtained using illegal funds.

They will not be able to remove children with UK citizenship from schools. Nor will they be able to remove children with EU citizenship if they have leave to remain under the Brexit treaties.