In one country estate in the village of Bramley Hampshire County conducted a large-scale repair work. Over the wide lawns and old trees, a cosy local Park stands a huge crane visible from the road. Biorepair Park a few weeks ago showed me local people who reported that they were surprised by the name of the new owner of the estate: Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow.
Wanting to understand that Luzhkov and his wife Yelena Baturina, the only Russian female billionaire, could draw in country life in England, I found this estate to the British land registry. Although I was able to find the cost of 5.5 million pounds (7.7 million dollars) — I did not find in him any Russian names. The owner is the company Skymist Holdings Limited, which currently holds, and in this mansion large-scale repair work. If it was a British company, it would be possible to check whether Luzhkov is the owner. But, alas, the company Skymist registered in the British virgin Islands, where the name of the owner can be hidden. Thus, the trail ends.
I remembered Biorepair Park this week, when the Prime Minister of great Britain David Cameron told the Queen that the leaders of the two “fantastically corrupt” countries — Nigeria and Afghanistan — will take part in the summit dedicated to the fight against corruption, which he spends in London. Press diligently posted that inappropriate comment by posting it as something offensive — even though, when the President of Nigeria muhammadu Buhari (Muhammadu Buhari) was asked to comment on this statement, he acknowledged that Cameron “told the truth”. Bukhari was too polite to properly reply to Cameron: if we start to name the countries “fantastically corrupt”, then we should also include in this list the UK and US.
Of course, “corruption” in London has a somewhat different shape than in Abuja or Kabul. Daily life in London does not involve a regular payment of bribes, and the British judicial system is highly respected. However, over the past few decades, the London financiers and lawyers helped launder billions of dollars of stolen money through the British virgin Islands and other British territory. The British property market — as the real estate market in new York for a long time operates as a traditional Swiss Bank, offering a safe investment real estate owners who want to hide their names and the sources of their income. In several us States — Delaware, new Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming — anonymous owners can register a company without going through almost any legal checks.
The situation is beginning to change, albeit very late. Leak Panamanian documents touched on Cameron personally, because they contained information that his late father ran — legally — offshore investment Fund. This week in London, Cameron announced that from now on in the UK, the names of the beneficial owners of UK residential property will have to appear in the state register. In January last year, us authorities also have established similar rules, starting with Manhattan and the County of Miami-Dade County in Florida.
However, the authorities have still much to do. In fact, in this case we are dealing with a perception problem: since we do not perceive a direct impact on our own lives, we can easily pretend that corruption in Moscow or Alma-ATA, Kazakhstan, is primarily the consequence of a moral weakness, Russians and Kazakhs, and not our weakness. Since we don’t have corpses in the streets”, according to one analyst, we regard what is happening as “not our problem”.
However, we pay for it in other ways. Think about the time and money that we spent on the fight against mismanagement and corruption in other countries. Think of the effort that is required to overcome the effects of the collapse of the corrupt countries — Afghanistan, for example — or to counter their aggressive or threatening behavior, as was the case with Russia. The world will be safer and richer if we stop to launder money that helped to create these corrupt system. However, like drug addicts and alcoholics, we must first recognize that a problem exists before we can begin to solve it.
Anne Applebaum (Anne Applebaum)
Original publishing: How the U. S. and Britain help kleptocrats around the world — and how we pay the price as well
