The economic crime bill being debated today in the House of Lords does not, as the home secretary, Priti Patel, insisted, show Britain’s determination to root out Vladimir Putin’s “mob of oligarchs and kleptocrats”. On the contrary, it demonstrates ingrained complacency towards dirty money that is so complete it begins to resemble complicity.
This bill tweaks the sanctions regulations to remove some of the bottlenecks that have made the UK lag behind its allies; and it updates the rules around “unexplained wealth orders”, to fix some of the flaws in the last measure that was supposedly going to tame the oligarchy. What makes the bill important, however, is the fact that it imposes transparency on offshore companies that own property in the UK. This is why the legislation is so urgent it was rushed through the House of Commons in a single day on Monday – a process that would usually take months.
