A recent investigation by the Financial Times found that more than a hundred billion pounds’ worth of real estate in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies. London properties account for two-thirds of that amount. Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph, says that London’s property market has become “a form of legalized international money laundering.”
.. Witanhurst has always been an attractive place to park new money.
.. In recent years, more than seventy per cent of newly built properties in central London have been bought by foreign investors—often for cash.
.. I observed that there was a vogue for digging out enormous basements beneath London properties—creating so-called “iceberg houses”—and asked him if he approved.
.. Litvinenko is the rector of St. Petersburg Mining Institute, the small university where Putin acquired his Ph.D.—with a thesis later found to have been heavily plagiarized. Both Andrey Guryev and his son, Andrey Guryev, Jr., who is now the C.E.O. of PhosAgro, also received degrees there.