First, there’s a domestic dimension: you won’t be surprised to hear that at least some, and possibly rather a lot, of the Russian/Ukrainian online fraud about which the City of London Police commissioner was moaning last week, is facilitated by opaque UK companies, including LPs and LLPs.
Second, there’s an international dimension. Eastern Europe and Eurasia states are being bled white by fraud and corruption; plenty of it, as we see, is facilitated by UK-registered companies. Those Eastern European and Eurasian citizens have smelt a rat; here’s Ben Judah in American Prospect :
The conventional wisdom is that ordinary citizens of these states—feudally ruled, politically pillaged—will become obsessed about corruption. So far, so good: You cannot talk about politics in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the rest without talking about corruption. But beyond this, the conventional wisdom—that the middle classes, the young, or the globally connected will then demand a new, Western-style government—breaks down.
The reason this logic doesn’t hold is that East European corruption fighters are discovering that Western countries and their systems of offshore economies have enabled the colossal theft of their countries’ resources. Bubbling up from beneath the surface of both the Russian opposition and the Ukrainian Maidan is a new sense of disdain for the West.
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Trash's Russian-money bank
