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Today in Focus

How to end Britain’s love affair with Russian money

Today in Focus

The Guardian

News, Daily News

4.65.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Oliver Bullough has traced how the British financial system has sheltered ill-gotten Russian wealth over many decades. Can the system be cleaned up?. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:08.5

Today, British banks and politicians

0:12.0

have sheltered Russian wealth for decades.

0:15.0

Can the system be cleaned up?

0:30.0

A few years ago, the writer Oliver Bullo

0:32.8

started running tours in London.

0:36.8

So we put people in a bus.

0:38.4

We would start on the embankment just

0:40.0

down from the House of Parliament.

0:42.0

This wasn't your regular sightseeing bus.

0:45.5

Because Putin's former deputy prime minister

0:49.2

had a duplex apartment there.

0:51.5

They called them kleptocracy tours.

0:54.2

We would drive into Belgrade, point out

0:58.0

Oleg Arches house is the houses of children of Oleg Arches.

1:01.0

Sometimes we'd go up into North London.

1:02.8

There's the second biggest house in London

1:06.4

after Buckingham Palace actually belongs

1:08.0

to a former member of the Russia's Upper House of Parliament

1:10.7

in Russian fertiliser magnate.

1:12.3

So I mean, the idea was to reveal the sort of hidden side

1:16.3

of London, really.

...

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