Leaders | Dismantling Londongrad

How to solve Britain’s dirty-money problem

If the government really wants to take on the oligarchs it should fund its corruption-fighters properly

OF THE BARRAGE of sanctions the West has inflicted on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the most symbolically powerful, if not the most economically consequential, have been those targeting the cronies of Vladimir Putin. Britain’s government trumpets the fact that it has announced measures against more Putin-linked plutocrats than any other country. It is less keen to talk about why that might be. London has long been a destination for dirty money. Corrupt capital flows to Britain from all over the world, but no one doubts that Russian loot is a major contributor to a money-laundering problem that the National Crime Agency puts conservatively at £100bn ($125bn) a year.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Dismantling Londongrad”

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