The wife of the former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, Elena Baturina, was in London persona non grata. According to media reports, the president of Inteco Management Corporation, which was considered the richest woman in Russia, was not accepted into the British elite. And the other day, they simply fired from their post as a board member of the Mayor's Foundation for London (MFL), an elite circle of iconic people in the British establishment, headed by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
As you know, at first, Baturina was able to get into this circle of the chosen ones thanks to a one-time act of charity in the form of a check of 138 thousand pounds. But despite the well-known maxim that “money doesn’t smell”, it turned out that in the harsh capitalist reality an unpleasant smell of dubious capital can still become a good reason for exclusion from “high society”. That now, on her own sad experience, a previously successful business woman has experienced.
The sale of land and other assets began - parts of Baturina's empire, which was falling apart before our eyes. At the same time, criminal cases began to mature. Baturina preferred to retire first to Austria and then to London. There she got involved in many projects, began to promote "green energy" in the Balkan countries, to build a hotel chain in Morocco, but her compatriots banally threw her away. In a word, without her husband, the mayor, her business did not go, and now from the "high society" of London, the former "Queen of Moscow" was also asked to "go out." A sad result, although she is unlikely to have to dry crackers on the windowsill of her villa …
In a rogue state
However, not one Ms. Baturina from among the Russian oligarchs found herself "over the hill" in the position of an outcast in a "decent" society. Clouds began to gather even over Roman Abramovich himself, who, with his capital of 9 billion pounds, is considered the 13th richest man in Britain. The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph recently reported that in order to obtain a new British visa, it may be necessary to explain the origin of his condition. The oligarch lives in London on the basis of the so-called investor visa, which is issued to wealthy people, those who have invested more than £ 2 million in the British economy, which allows them to enter the United Kingdom for 40 months.
According to media reports, investor visas were issued to about 700 Russians, but after the introduction of the new rules, the number of visas issued dropped by 84%.
“We are currently taking a fresh look at how this way of obtaining visas works and are undertaking new checks on investors,” a government official told the Guardian. As a result, Abramovich was unable to attend the FA Cup final, where Chelsea beat Manchester United, last year due to an expired visa.
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Ultimately, Abramovich was still given a visa, but for many others, especially those who had dealings with Themis in Russia, the situation becomes awful. Evgeny Chichvarkin, for example, who owned the largest chain of chain stores "Euroset" in Russia, fled after being suspected of selling "gray" phones, now in London he owns only a small liquor store.
The richest banker Sergei Pugachev was also broke. If earlier his fortune exceeded a billion dollars, now, by his own admission, it has shrunk to 70 million. Business abroad did not work out for such a shocking billionaire as Polonsky. He ended up in jail in Cambodia, was extradited to Russia and eventually ended up behind bars in his homeland.
Rich experience of capital extraction
People familiar with the history of British capitalism warn the fugitives that the British have a rich history of taking money from foreigners. In India, for example, they allowed, when she was a colony of England, to form a local "elite" who robbed their people. And when these nouveaux riches, happily rubbing their hands, arrived with the stolen in London for permanent residence, the brave British, within the framework of the law, immediately promptly confiscated the stolen capital from them.
Are Britain preparing the same fate today for those who fled from Russia? This cannot be ruled out. Recently, the British media published the location and value of the apartments, houses and estates of the Russian oligarchs in London. The Guardian insisted that all of this property be confiscated in favor of Britain.
According to the Guardian, immigrants from Russia now own real estate in London worth 1.1 billion pounds. If the law is passed, it can be expropriated in favor of the state.
It is also significant that in the whole history not a single Russian who fled or simply moved with capital to England, before the revolution or much later, has occupied a high position there in society.
And a threat to life
But being expelled from "high society" or being left without money is far from all the misfortunes that fugitives with money from Russia have to face in the "blessed West." Often they have to give up there not only with their former position in society and with the capital acquired by "backbreaking labor", but also with life itself. The most famous example of this kind is the sad fate of the schemer Boris Berezovsky, who in March 2013 was found in his luxurious home in London with a noose around his neck.
At first, he started talking about suicide, but then there was a lot of evidence that the fugitive oligarch was killed and that, most likely, the British special services were behind this. Berezovsky's daughter brought up strong evidence that the oligarch did not actually hang himself, but became a victim of the murderers. However, earlier the former chief of security of the oligarch Sergei Sokolov had already announced the murder of Berezovsky. According to the British newspaper Daily Mail, he believes that the CIA and the British intelligence service MI-6 were involved in the death of Boris Berezovsky.
And such a sad fate befell more than one fugitive from Russia.
In England, Berezovsky's inseparable friend, Badri Patarkatsishvili, suddenly passed away. The entrepreneur died of a heart attack. In November 2012, Alexander Perepelichny, chief informant of the Swiss fund Hermitage Capital, of the international adventurer William Browder, went for a daily run near his home in Surrey. And soon he was found dead. The examination at first did not reveal anything suspicious and recognized that death was due to cardiac arrest. However, three years later, when the autopsy was repeated, the pathologists found in his stomach the remains of the poisonous plant, Helsemia.
Much has been written about the mysterious death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, associated with Berezovsky, who was poisoned in London with polonium. But a month after Litvinenko, another fugitive Russian from Berezovsky's circle died - Yuri Golubev, the founder of the Yukos oil company. One of the causes of death is considered a heart attack. Such a mournful list of deaths of former Russian oligarchs in foggy Albion can be continued for a long time.
But even they can be pitied, because they have lost the most precious thing in the life of every person. The great Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin said about such: "People without a homeland become historical dust, faded autumn leaves, driven from place to place and trampled by strangers into the mud."
… Now, it seems, Luzhkov understood this, returned from Austria and London, and fiddles for himself somewhere in the Russian outback in an apiary, breeding bees.
Vladimir Malyshev