Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab says the British government is considering confiscating property on British soil belonging to Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs, and using the luxury properties to house Ukrainian refugees.
It emerged during a radio interview on Friday, when the Deputy Prime Minister was asked whether the government would consider confiscating properties belonging to oligarchs with links to the Kremlin, as part of the British sanctions regime against Russia.
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– Yes, if we have the evidence and the legal basis in place, then we will do it, he said to the radio channel LCB.
When asked if these properties could be used to house Ukrainian refugees, the Deputy Prime Minister replied as follows:
– Yes absolutely.
– We look at this from all points of view. This is a team effort that extends across the entire government. Everything from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense to Michael Gove, of course, and the Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) is driving very hard on this, Raab said.
– It’s an ultimate sting to Putin
This measure was first promoted by the opposition Liberal Democrats. But the influential minister Michael Gove is also said to have made a significant effort to convince the government to consider the measure.
– If they manage to achieve this, it will be the ultimate trick for the Russian authorities to kick the oligarchs out of their properties and take in Ukrainian refugees who have just fled Putin. It will be to turn the table upside down, says senior lecturer at the University of Agder, Jan Erik Mustad, to Nettavisen.
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“Now the British government is trying to find a legal basis for confiscating the oligarchs’ properties without compensating them,” says Mustad. “We see that the economic sanctions have already had a negative effect on the market and the banking system in Russia.” The British have an opportunity here to play a crucial role.
Enormous forces at work
The hope is to hit the oligarchs so hard that they pressure Vladimir Putin to stop the invasion.
– This will be part of the economic sanctions that are now being implemented from NATO and the EU, and Britain is now trying to get rid of this leeway of the oligarchs who are connected to Putin. There are enormous forces at work here, and the UK will probably use as much power as they have at their disposal, says Mustad. The British government has been criticized for being slow to sanction the oligarchs.
– The background for this is that there has been a strong pressure on the British authorities, long before the invasion of Ukraine, to limit these rather limitless opportunities the oligarchs had to move their wealth to Britain after the fall of the wall, Mustad says.
– It is probably about eight to ten prominent oligarchs who came after the Soviet era and settled in Britain because there were liberal economic laws, dual citizenship and other favorable opportunities to invest these enormous fortunes. Depriving them of dual British citizenship is also part of the sanctions being considered, he says.
«Londongrad»
Mustad says the oligarchs have helped push house prices in central London to astronomical heights. And put at the forefront, only customers like the Norwegian Petroleum Fund can compete against these wealthy Russians (the Petroleum Fund has, as is well known, bought properties in fashionable Regent Street). It is not without reason that the British capital has been nicknamed “London degree”.
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– The oligarchs have bought up a lot of the Mayfair area in London. It is an old noble area in the center that has had housing prices that have been very high. Russian oligarchs have helped push housing prices so high that ordinary Britons no longer have the financial means to live there, Mustad says.
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– In addition, the oligarchs have bought large estates in prestigious suburbs. These are large, old estates that belonged to the aristocratic British upper class, which the oligarchs have refurbished. These are huge properties we are talking about, he says. More than one million Ukrainians are on the run just over a week after the Russian invasion began. All indications are that this number will increase considerably in the time ahead.
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