www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oligarchs-bought-london?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Apologies if this has already been posted.
The stark implication of “Putin’s People” [by Catherine Belton] is not just that the President of Russia may be a silent partner in one of England’s most storied sports franchises but also that England itself has been a silent and handsomely compensated partner in Putin’s kleptocratic designs—that, in the past two decades, Russian oligarchs have infiltrated England’s political, economic, and legal systems. “We must go after the oligarchs,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared after the invasion of Ukraine, doing his best to sound Churchillian. But, as the international community labors to isolate Putin and his cronies, the question is whether England has been too compromised by Russian money to do so.
There is a lot of mud slinging in many of the books about Putin and Russia. Many of the allegations can't be proved. We can definitely have well-grounded suspicions all the same.
However, the fact remains, and the New Yorker hammers it home, that London is open for business when it comes to money laundering, that there are MPs whose services are available for a price, and that there are professionals in London's legal, financial, and accounting world who are not squeamish about providing services to people whose source of wealth is not immediately apparent.