Is Britain The Playground of Fugitive Billionaires?

After Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi is the third Indian billionaire fugitive seeking asylum in Britain. The British policy is to grant asylum first and then let countries plead in the British courts for extradition. The process is lengthy and cumbersome and often takes years as Britain has some of the best legal brains and lawmakers fight for the wealthy billionaires who seek refuge in the UK.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

The British, do not favour asylum seekers and have been at loggerheads with the EU on this issue. But the attitude changes drastically when it involves fugitive billionaires. Here Britain is way ahead of other EU nations.

A Deutsche Bank report says that between 2006 and 2015, UK received $129 billion from fugitive asylum seekers that was routed to its offshore havens — the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey.

Since the UK does not prosecute money-laundering offences, banks in the UK launder money with impunity, says Corruption Watch. Hence the UK is considered the safest and most lucrative haven for financial fraudsters.

Corruption Watch estimates that “UK’s wealth management industry manages $800 billion of global wealth at particular risk of laundering.” The Financial Control Authority (FCA), which is the regulator for the financial sector, has brought zero prosecutions for breaches in UK’s Money Laundering Regulations since 2007, claims Corruption Watch.

Britain’s financial industry is based on opaque laws, but the FCA has not budged despite immense global pressure. Be it money laundering, round-trip trading or hedging securities, UK laws provide full protection to investors against any legal scrutiny. The International Commodity Exchange (ICE) at London is the hotbed of deal-making where Big Banks and Big Oil along with Swiss commodity traders provide unique opportunity to convert all forms of money into commodity trading wealth with no questions asked.

According to Tulip Financial Research, Britain has some 135,000 “high-net-worth” individuals, with liquid assets averaging £6.4 million. The Independent says Britain is today known as ‘Switzerland on the Thames’. It says: “More than 200 foreign law firms now have offices in the UK, while more cash is said to be managed out of a couple of square miles of Mayfair than in the whole of Germany”. So, it is highly unlikely the UK will adhere to extradition requests by India or others.

The biggest wealth to Britain comes from Russian tax fugitives and oligarchs. Among them are Nikolay Glushkov, former Director of Aeroflot, Andrey Borodin, the former President of Bank of Moscow, accused of financial crimes, Boris Berezovsky and Sergei Kapchuk, all billionaire Russian fraudsters who have received political asylum in Britain. They have all bought exclusive properties in Mayfair, in Berkshire, in Belgravia and in Chelsea. Together with dozens of other billionaire fugitives they have helped make the UK the undisputed financial capital of the world.

Why didn’t Najib, J. Low and others follow suit?

 

Reference:

Why Britain is the Playground of Fugitive Billionaires? Sandip Sen, DNA, Jun 26, 2018 (https://www.dnaindia.com)