Luxury life despite the Ukraine war: London is a paradise for Putin's oligarchs - even though the sanctions list includes more than 1,500 Russians.
London - London has a lot to offer tourists - but if you want to experience the city from a different side, you should do a kleptocrats tour.
Roman Borisovich, a Russian human rights activist and Putin critic, has been organizing this somewhat different city tour for six years now.
She takes tourists past the multi-million dollar city villas of Russian oligarchs in London – who continue to lead their decadent lives there despite sanctions.
Despite the war in Ukraine, Putin's oligarchs live a life of luxury in London
Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, the British government has included numerous supporters of Putin on the sanctions list.
However, many oligarchs don't notice much of this - and simply continue to live their luxury lives in London undisturbed.
The nicknames “Londongrad” or “Moscow on the Thames” show how popular the capital of Great Britain is with rich Russians.
The Witanhurst country estate, for example, provides an insight into the life of an oligarch in London – after Buckingham Palace, it is the largest privately used property in London.
The north London castle is owned by Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev.
The facilities: 65 rooms, three underground floors, a garage for 25 cars, a swimming pool.
Andrey Guryev is on the sanctions list.
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The Witanhurst estate in north London is owned by Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev
© IMAGO / Wirestock
Despite sanctions, luxury real estate in London is particularly popular with Russia's oligarchs
However, critics say that this still does not include enough people who have invested their money in London – for example in real estate.
According to the organization Transparency International UK, almost 52,000 properties in the UK are owned by anonymous investors, some of whom are close to the Russian authorities.
According to a report published in February, luxury properties in London in particular were bought with “suspicious money” via opaque offshore companies.
The British government has tightened numerous laws.
"Much has been achieved," says Oliver Bullough to
tagesschau.de
.
The journalist and author has been working on the subject of Russian oligarchs in London for years.
In his opinion, however, the government must go much further and sanction those close to Putin even more.
A year of war and a list of sanctions: Russian money still stays in London
The fact that there is a lot of Russian money, some of it dirty, in London has long been an open secret.
According to observers, this is partly due to visa programs with which Russians were deliberately lured to Great Britain in the past.
Since the mid-1990s, more than 700 Russians are said to have received residence permits through these “golden visas” alone.
And politics is not free of Russian money either: in the past, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's party had repeatedly benefited from donations from Russian citizens.
In February 2022, the Labor Party published information on this: According to this, more than two million euros in donations from Russian sources had flowed into the Conservative Party since Johnson took office.
List of rubrics: © IMAGO / Wirestock
