U.K. Faces Russian Threat From ‘Within Its Own Borders’

A long delayed publication of a report detailing Russian influence in British politics has said the U.K. “now faces a threat from Russia within its own borders.”

Today’s threat comes from a group of wealthy Russians living in the U.K. “with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the U.K. business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth.

But the entrenchment goes far beyond the usual oligarchs, which London has long been used to. There is now a whole “industry of enablers,” says the so-called ‘Russia Report’. This includes “lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals” who have played a role, “wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state.”

With money laundering as well as “reputation laundering” now commonplace, it is much harder pick out good money from bad, William ‘Bill’ Browder, co-founder of Hermitage Capital, said to the U.K.’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament: “Russian state interests, working in conjunction with and through criminal private interests, set up a ‘buffer’ of Westerners who become de facto Russian state agents.

“As a result, U.K. actors have to deal with Russian criminal interests masked as state interests, and Russian state interests masked by their Western agents,” said Browder, who has also campaigned for governments around the world to adopt the Magnitsky Act which sanctions and bars entry to corrupt individuals and human rights offenders.

House Of Lords Compromised

Part of Browder’s evidence to the Committee showed payments from Russia to members of the House of Lords, the U.K.’s second chamber of Parliament.

Though he revealed names to the Committee, none were published in its report. It does note, however, that “a number of Members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state.”

It is not just names that were omitted from Russia Report for security’s sake. On details of Russian expats for example, the report states, “The extent to which Russian expatriates are using their access to UK businesses and politicians to exert influence in the UK is ***.”

The report was originally due to be published in spring last year, but was repeatedly delayed until its eventual release on Tuesday (21 July). That has led to criticisms that the report is already out of date.

For example, there are recommendations in the report around reforming the U.K.’s Tier 1 investor visa, which it says should have “a more robust approach” to vetting applicants who pay £2 million ($1.5 million) in return for residency. However, the U.K. Home Office bought in tighter rules at the same time the Russia Report should have been published in March 2019.

But even with reforms like these, the Committee acknowledges some Russian threats from within the U.K. cannot be untangled. Now the priority must be to “mitigate the risk and ensure that, where hostile activity is uncovered, the tools exist to tackle it at source.”

There must also be more measures in place to protect those Russian individuals who might not be working to promote state interests, or even be opposed to them. The chemical attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury was a key event that led to the commissioning of the Russia Report. It now warns that other critics of Putin are at risk in the U.K.

This is because President Vladimir Putin considers the U.K. “to be a key diplomatic adversary,” it says.

The New Normal

With the U.K. viewed as an adversary and Russian wealth now so entrenched in both political and business realms, the Committee concludes that Russian influence will be here to stay:

“In brief, Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the U.K. business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth.”