When Vladimir Putin launched all-out war on Ukraine a year ago, the British government realised that letting Russian oligarchs buy large chunks of west London had been foolish. The long-cherished belief that the civilising air of Eaton Square might turn kleptocrats into democrats was finally – if belatedly – abandoned.
The fruit of the government’s realisation is the new register of overseas owners of UK properties, which ended the anonymity that oligarchs enjoyed by hiding their mansions behind offshore-registered shell companies. The register has had some teething problems, in that 13,000 companies missed the January deadline to reveal their owners, but surely the bigger picture is that this enduring loophole in our transparency rules is finally closed, and the playing field levelled, right? Wrong. A huge loophole still exists, which renders last year’s reform pretty much meaningless, and which almost no politicians have noticed.
