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01-02-2017, 10:51 PM

London Rolls Out the Blood-Red Carpet for Kleptocrats

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/30/opinion/30judah-inyt-web/30judah-inyt-web-master768.jpg

This is why it angers me that today, the dictator’s son and confidant, Maxim Bakiyev, lives in a mansion purchased in 2010 for $4.3 million in a London suburb less than 20 miles from my own family home. Little did I know, when I flew back after the Bishkek massacre, that Mr. Bakiyev was also traveling to Britain.

Of course, it was no surprise, because London has become a personal valet to men like him:

It’s a dictators’ safe space, where billions of dollars are laundered through the London real estate market every year, contributing to what the National Crime Agency estimates to be (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/police-lack-resources-to-carry-out-money-laundering-investigations-10309052.html) an annual total of more $125 billion laundered in Britain.

British law is on the side of the kleptocrats. All an autocrat on the run has to do is create a shell company to hide his identity and the source of his illicit wealth, and then use this instrument to purchase property incognito.

Britain’s best-paid brokers and lawyers are here to help — and will ask no awkward questions about the provenance of their clients’ cash.

Such anonymous companies now own nearly 40,000 (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/26/revealed-9-rise-in-london-properties-owned-by-offshore-firms) London properties.

Some of these purchases may be entirely legitimate and innocent, but these tools of secrecy are well known to be favored by money launderers:

The anticorruption organization Transparency International has found (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/07/london-estate-agents-caught-on-camera-russian-buyer) that this technique has been used for three-quarters of properties whose owners have been investigated for corruption in Britain.

Just because there aren’t bodies on the streets of London doesn’t mean London isn’t abetting those who pile them up elsewhere.

The British establishment has long feigned ignorance of the business, but the London Laundromat is destroying the country’s reputation.

Across the former Soviet Union, Britain is now seen as a partner in corruption, not democracy, for elites seeking to asset-strip their own states.

The elected president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, has repeatedly called (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/kyrgyzstan-president-atambayev-maxim-bakiyev) — in vain — for Britain to stop sheltering “a guy who robbed us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/opinion/london-rolls-out-the-blood-red-carpet-for-kleptocrats.html?partner=rss&emc=rss