A couple of years ago, Andrew, an American academic, asked me to meet for a coffee. He was researching Chinese money and he wanted to hear about Chinese-owned assets in London and what the British government was doing to ensure their owners had earned their wealth legally. I get these requests every now and then, thanks to my role as a guide on the London Kleptocracy Tours, which show off oligarch-owned properties in the pricier parts of Knightsbridge and Belgravia, and I like to help if I can.
We met at a café in a rather grand building on Trafalgar Square – a building that, funnily enough, considering the topic we had met to discuss, Ukrainian oligarchs had swapped between them in 2016 to settle an argument, in the way that my son might give a rare football card to a friend after they’ve fallen out in the playground. Andrew had come well prepared for the meeting and had a checklist to work through, which was clearly designed to generate a list of names of other people he could speak to.
Which law enforcement agency was doing the most to tackle the threat of Chinese money laundering? Who was the best person to talk to at that agency? Which prosecutors had brought the best cases? Who had done the most robust research on the volume of Chinese-owned money in the UK, and what assets did that money tend to buy? Which politicians were most alert to the question, and how did they organise themselves?
