The toxic relationship between the Russian and British elites is something that needs full exposure. They have been collaborating to their mutual enrichment, and to the detriment of democracy and accountability everywhere, for decades, notes Oliver Bullough, the author of Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back.
I am part of a team that runs “kleptocracy tours” in west London, exposing how much of our capital city had been bought by foreign politicians and oligarchs. We always begin the tours just down river from the Houses of Parliament, beneath the balconies of the duplex apartment belonging to Russia’s former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, he writes for the Guardian:
Perhaps even more remarkable is the disused tube station belonging to Dmitry Firtash, the Ukrainian who ran Gazprom’s Ukraine joint venture. The Ministry of Defence sold him Brompton Road station in 2014, without even demanding the full £53m price. Instead it let him use a scheme designed to encourage social housing, under which purchasers of government property pay just a third up front.
The National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum has released a new Power 3.0 podcast episode on “Countering Kleptocracy from the Inside Out.” Tutu Alicante discusses the transnational elements of Equatorial Guinea’s kleptocracy, including its impact on regional and international institutions, and how coalitions of transnational civil society groups can respond. Tutu is the founding executive director of EG Justice and author of “To Catch a Kleptocrat: Lessons Learned from the Biens Mal Acquis Trials in France.”
