How Russia’s dirty money sullies Britain

Russia’s kleptocrats have grown used to laundering their money and reputations in London. The government has promised change, but how serious is it?

Vladimir Putin © Shutterstock
Putin’s tentacles are well integrated into London life
(Image credit: © Shutterstock)

What’s happened?

The long-delayed report on Russian influence on public life in the UK was finally published by the government last week. It found no “smoking gun” of evidence to show that Russian efforts to influence the result of the 2014 Scottish referendum, or the 2016 Brexit referendum, were successful. But its worrying main conclusion was that the UK has left it too late to untangle the web of Russian influence that permeates the country’s political and business elite. “Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’,” the report says. “There are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth. This level of integration – in ‘Londongrad’ in particular – means that any measures now being taken by the government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation.”

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.