Most of us already knew the ultra-rich lived according to their own rules, swaddled from scrutiny and anger by an industry of lawyers, accountants and other middle-men.
What we didn’t know was the ever-expanding scale of it – and how exactly the UK facilitates attempts to hide and launder their funds.
This is what comes out of the Pandora Papers, the latest revelations from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Now we know, for example, that the ruling family of Azerbaijan owned, at their recent peak, £429m of property in central London. The Aliyevs later sold part of that property empire to the Crown Estate for £67m.
