How English libel law enables Russian kleptocrats

Tories and Putin’s cronies are both impedance-matched and comorbid.

Given the Current Circumstances, now is a good time to revisit the special relationship between UK elites — lawyers, estate agents, legislators — and Russian oligarchs, which was brilliantly documented in a Dec 2021 report from Chatham House:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/12/uks-kleptocracy-problem/01-introduction

I wrote about this in early January, drawing a comparison between the manifest compatibility between UK elites — including the royals and their Tory cheerleaders — and Russia’s richest criminals and “The Klept” of William Gibson’s Peripheral novels:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

Both Gibson and Chatham House describe the UK (especially England, especially London, especially the City) as being uniquely well-suited among all world’s tax-havens to catering to the need of post-Soviet kleptocrats. Of course, the UK offers financial secrecy (both onshore and in its offshore “treasure islands” in the Channel, the Caribbean and elsewhere).

But more importantly, it offers financial respectability: there are armies of estate agents that will convert ill-gotten fortunes into leafy mansions in…