DAVID CAMERON, IN REPLY TO Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimea, had called his senior ministers to prepare the British riposte to the aggression. As his ministers hurried into 10, Downing Street, a sharp eyed photographer caught a shot of a briefing memo protruding from a document folder carried by one of the advisors. It stated that the government was against imposing economic sanctions on Russia, saying the UK ‘should not support for now trade sanctions or close London’s financial center to Russians'.
The explanation was easy to understand since London was a vital hub for Russian investment. The question was what kind of investment and with what money? How much dirty money transited the City and British crown dependencies and overseas territories, all of which collectively formed the world’s biggest network of occult financial operations?
British imperial power had been reborn in a new form, under a cloak of secrecy, a global network of financial power, centred on the City of London, serving a transnational elite, who ruled like medieval barons over their private fiefs, who offered their loyalty to the system in the form of capital, in exchange for the freedom to accumulate wealth and riches, protected from taxes, regulations, predatory politicians and confiscatory justice.
The barons were Russian oligarchs, oil sheikhs, hedge fund managers, tech billionaires and banker's.
At the top were the mega rich billionaires, like Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Ma Huateng, Jack Ma, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, their combined wealth was nearly one trillion dollars, an increase in 250 billion dollars from the previous year, their god was Mammon.
Trailing not far behind the top tier were the Russian oligarchs like Demitry Rybolovlev, German Khan, Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov, Aleksey Mordashov and their friends collectively worth over 250 billion dollars.
Then came the ultra rich, followed by the really rich, then the merely rich that some called tail end high-net-worth individuals. Whatever. In any case tailgating the mega rich billionaires was Pat Kennedy who’d built his fortune looking after all the others money.
The bottom feeders were the would be rich, wannabes, risk takers, who put their ill gotten gains into projects like the Ambergris Golf Resort, funneling their stolen wealth into safe havens and investing for the long-term in real estate.
In normal times such projects could go bust, in fact they often did, which wasn’t a problem, since in one way or another the money had been laundered via different stratagems, including inflated payments for various services, architects, promotional services and other fees to companies in London. In this way corrupt Russian officials laundered money, embezzled through fraudulent commodity trading, or the disposal of government assets valued way below market prices, transforming dirty rubles and dollars into clean capital.