Oliver Bullough
@OliverBullough
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Journalist; author of Butler to the World and Moneyland Sign up to my newsletter from @CodaStory here: …
Hay-on-Wye/Y Gelli
Joined August 2011
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Apologies again, but selling books is my job, so please, pre-order it, buy it for your MP. Shout and scream.
Thank you
7/7
It's at your local bookshop.
It's on bookshop:
It's on Amazon:
And Waterstone's:
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There must be 20 police officers outside the Belgrave Square property occupied by anarchists, which is I reckon approximately 20 more than ever checked the provenance of the money that bought it.
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Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian oligarch who bought a Florida mansion from Trump for $95 million, and a New York condo for $88 million, has been arrested in Monaco on corruption charges.
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Perhaps in response to Western sanctions against Putin's daughters, the Kremlin will sanction Boris Johnson's children and we'll find out how many of them there are?
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I just called up by someone who's worked on previous UK cases against oligarchs, who is looking in horror at what's (not) happening.
"The issue is that we have a whole service industry that constructs complexity. They are people who exist to make sure assets are impenetrable."
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Modest Proposal: if Jersey wants to be protected by the UK's Royal Navy, it should join the UK and pay UK taxes. if it doesn't, it should build its own navy.
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Britain is a money-laundering kleptocracy-enabling disgrace and the government is shamefully complicit.
Shall I send Prevent my address? Or does this only apply to ethnic minorities?
People who vilify Britain will be treated as extremists and referred to the Government’s deradicalisation Prevent programme under plans by Rishi Sunak.
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He may have fought communism as a student, worked for illegal pro-democracy newspapers, and been arrested after martial law was declared, but what does this foreigner know about democracy?
Is it any wonder that the EU is so despised with men like Tusk as a President He just doesn’t get democracy
@labourleave
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This isn't true. Russian oligarchs don't keep/wash their money in Berlin, Paris or Washington; or educate their kids there; or own property there.
London has an important role to play so, please, don't get your excuses in early for its failure to do so.
Prime minister will soon make an address to the nation on the crisis in Ukraine. But the grim reality is that the important decisions will be taken by Washington and the Berlin/Paris axis
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In 2019, parliament's Intelligence/Security Committee looked into Russian interference in the UK.
@BorisJohnson
delayed the report, tried to suppress it, then dismissed it as an attempt to delegitimise Brexit.
It's worth reading. Here's a paragraph.
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I'm bored of Boris Johnson being prime minister now.
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“So, did you manage to sell it once the war was over?” I asked (a bit worried he’d maybe been targeted by looters).
“No, didn’t make a penny. With my neighbours we drank the lot. I’ve never been so drunk for so long, it was brilliant. I barely remember the war at all. 7/7
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I remember well how Seumas Milne, Corbyn's head of communications, shook Putin's hand on stage in Sochi in 2014, six months after Putin first invaded Ukraine. I don't remember any warnings though. Must be my memory that's going.
The truth about Jeremy Corbyn and Putin. He warned against him and his oligarchs for years. And was ignored.
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Credit to the USSR. It's far-sighted indeed to invade Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic States in 1939-40 as insurance against a weapon that hadn't been invented yet.
@blunty1999
They occupied E Europe as insurance against US nuclear capability. It was a Mexican standoff - which fortunately ended with little blood being shed.
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I had a friend in Abkhazia (breakaway statelet in the ex-USSR) whose dad I got drunk with once, while he told me his own experience of social distancing. It was caused by war rather than epidemic, but I thought I might share it with you. 1/7
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I can't believe the NYT has fallen for this spin. Shokin sacked the only leading Ukrainian prosecutors interested in investigating Burisma, and Joe Biden did everyone a favour by forcing Poroshenko to get rid of him.
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This story is absolutely insane. At first glance, you think "well done, Companies House, at last they're getting serious about the epidemic of fraud enabled by the misuse of British corporations".
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I wrote a letter to
@Nigel_Farage
. I don't anticipate a reply, so I thought I'd post it here too.
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You do have to give some credit to Elon Musk. Within the space of a few short months, he has managed to make this web site so toxic that people are turning to *Mark Zuckerberg* for a less hateful alternative.
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A reminder: "punishable by fine" still translates as "legal for rich people".
Manchester City’s ban has been lifted on appeal. Still a fine to be paid, but a huge win for the club.
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I don't think Boris Johnson is improperly influenced by rich Russians, it's worse than that: he's improperly influenced by rich people wherever they're from.
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Hi everyone, a brief self-publicising interlude, sorry about that.
I have a book out next week, it's called Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals.
And it feels depressingly timely. 1/7
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It was so much easier when politicians could blame the EU -- "we'd love to do it, but EU law, you know..." but now the EU's blaming us. So who are you going to blame now,
@BorisJohnson
?
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Has Elon Musk suggested that the logical solution to the Ukraine crisis is that it give up its weapons and agree to neutrality, in exchange for having its borders guaranteed by America, Britain and Russia yet?
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Is there any precedent for such a complete breakdown in British public life? Both major parties split and useless, unprecedented electoral fraud, BBC terrified of its own shadow, no significant convictions for the financial crisis, and all of it apparently without consequence.
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Fair play to the bishop of Leeds. He's not messing about.
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So, a summary: the UK enables a global fraud epidemic by registering companies without any checks. Man exposes this, by creating a daft company and telling the press. Companies House prosecutes him (5 years later!?), and issues a boastful press release. This is a disgrace.
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In 2012, Coutts (the bank that is being publicly whipped at present) was fined £8.75 million by British regulators "because it failed to take reasonable care to establish and maintain effective anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls".
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I wrote this about Boris Johnson's decision to quash the report on Russian interference. This isn't just a Johnson story though, but a decades-long alliance between our two countries' elites that needs to be exposed, and put a stop to.
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If the government is serious about wanting to block kleptocratic money flows, from Russia or elsewhere, it will:
1. clean up Companies House
2. impose transparency on offshore-owned property
3. resource our investigative agencies.
Until it does those things, it's not serious.
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'Brexit Secretary' is like a real life version of 'Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher'. If Michael Gove does take over, he'll only last one book, and will actually have been Nigel Farage on Polyjuice all along anyway.
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4. The real biggie for me is the "transatlantic task force" identifying and freezing assets. If the G7 can train all of its investigative resources on cutting through the shell companies, and finding the 51% of Russian national wealth held offshore, that is a game-changer.
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'king hell, this is bleak.
What chance have British journalists got when even our own government is prepared to roll the pitch for oligarchs keen to sue us?
🚨 EXCLUSIVE INVESTIGATION - A vast cache of hacked material from Russia has shed new light on how the UK govt helped warlord Prigozhin mount a targeted legal attack on a journalist in London. This is
#londongrad
writ large.
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I know the idea of a new centrist party is a joke, but I can't help thinking there's political room in the UK in the gap between politicians that deport British people for being black, and ones that excuse dictators as long as they don't like America.
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"And it's not passive either. They work with tax havens to craft more impenetrable structures, then sell them to their clients, then we have to try to penetrate them without any people or money."
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It's remarkable how, throughout the ages, old men remain consistently enthusiastic about sending young men to die.
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I got interested in why the River Wye was in such a bad state, and that led me to Peter Hammond and
@ashsmith43
at
@WindrushWasp
, who took on sewage pollution, feeble regulators, and the giant water industry and, hopefully for all of our rivers, won.
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Holy crap. And there was Putin thinking shifting out of dollars into euros would keep things safe.
Second, we will paralyse the assets of Russia’s central bank.
This will freeze its transactions.
And it will make it impossible for the Central Bank to liquidate its assets.
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It's almost like we were deliberately misinformed about it by cynical news organisations for decades.
The core problem of Brexit was that the British never really understood the EU
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The City of London is a centre for Russian money laundering.
@OliverBullough
#Gibraltar
is no more a sordid tax haven than the City of London is a centre for Russian money laundering.
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I'm sure there are good arguments to change how the BBC is funded, but trashing the national broadcaster to distract attention from the prime minister's inability to stop being shit is inexcusable.
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"I suppose these are what you'd call butlers. I know everyone deserves a lawyer, but sometimes I wonder how this is legal."
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Fake names but real passports looks very indicative of state involvement.
Both men travelled to the UK using genuine Russian passports, but under aliases, prosecutors say. Prosecutors won't seek their extradition since Russia doesn't extradite its own citizens but have sought European arrest warrant
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Am in Ukraine. Literally everyone is asking me: what on earth is happening in your country? Yes, everyone in *Ukraine*.
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This is superb by
@edwardlucas
, who hopefully will win a seat in parliament at the next election and can take the fight inside parliament.
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I just got asked onto
@TimesRadio
(which was nice) to talk about this article.
It is a near-perfect example of the kind of gimmick that UK politicians have chucked out over the last few months, like chaff behind a Mi-8. 1/n
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Britain has a kleptocracy problem, and the first step to solving it would be if our dear leaders recognised that fact.
So, can someone tell
@BorisJohnson
please?
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I am fully delighted to see the worldwide surge of admiration for Dr Fiona Hill, who is incredibly intelligent as well as super-kind, and you should all buy the book she wrote with Clifford Gaddy. Operative in the Kremlin is the best account of Putin by a mile, imo.
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It's fascinating (if deeply disturbing) to see how corruption works in a UK concept. I'm accustomed to seeing it in developing countries, and essentially the mechanisms here are the same: cutting corners, doing favours, making money.
CSC Director
@LizDavidBarrett
analyses NAO revelations that suppliers with political ties were given 'high-priority' status in UK PPE procurement
@SussexPolitics
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This couldn't be worse as a response.
We have an opportunity for a national conversation about the health of our democracy, and he turns it into a partisan attack. I'd like to say this is a surprise, but it's not. What a disaster.
"This is about pressure from Islingtonian Remainers who have seized on this report to suggest Russia was responsible for Brexit." This is Johnson doing Putin's work for him: Relying on tribal division to avoid tackling the Russian threat to British national security.
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30 seconds on climate change, and five minutes on ear-rings. This is desperate.
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Whatever the
#RussiaReport
says (and my prediction is that it will be [redacted]), I hope it helps Brits recognise that being the world's primary supplier of klepto-services is both an unsustainable and an unconscionable way for a democracy to make a living.
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Really enjoyed making this klepto-tour with the Led by Donkeys crew!
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Man who killed 300 kids by bombing a theatre criticises mistreatment of cultural figures.
"It's impossible to imagine such a thing in our country"
President Vladimir Putin uses J K Rowling as an example of Western cynicism and "cancel culture", which he says is currently being aimed at Russia.
Latest on Ukraine:
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube
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As Elon Musk knows better than anyone: no one EVER goes back on a deal once they've signed off on it.
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I think we have to give some credit to Liz Truss here. It took May and Johnson months to stake a genuinely unshakeable claim to worst prime minister ever. She's done it in days.
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So BBC management has simultaneously picked a fight with Gary Lineker and David Attenborough. This kind of strategic planning must be why they're paid the big bucks.
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The BBC's WATO has finally been obliged to stop responding to Climate Change reports by interviewing "sceptics", so now it's responding to a vaccination story by interviewing an anti-vaxxer. FFS.
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5,500 bank branches have closed since 2015, meaning tens of thousands of elderly people struggle to access any financial services at all, but apparently the most important banking issue in Britain is whether Nigel Farage has to move his account from one bit of Natwest to another.
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Like all the truly great patriots, he loved his country so much that he not only lived in a tax haven, but owned one.
Farewell with respect and admiration to Sir David Barclay who rescued a great newspaper, created many thousands of jobs across the UK and who believed passionately in the independence of this country and what it could achieve.
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I put together a list of books that I hope might help people make sense of what's happening in Ukraine. Books by
@CatherineBelton
,
@peterpomeranzev
,
@yaffaesque
,
@tomburgis
and other great writers.
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This is Ukraine's foremost anti-corruption activist. If you're a journalist and genuinely want to know what's happened, rather than to repeat the NYT's terrible lapse in journalistic judgement and swallow this spin, then speak to her.
@OliverBullough
Thank you
@OliverBullough
- indeed it’s insane to use UKRAINE as a ball at the AMERICAN national political field. Prosecutor Shokin did not open the case on Zlochevskyi & Burisma. He dumped it. And he was fired for being corrupt and failing prosecution reform
@kenvogel
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I've spent a week or two writing a piece about how "anti-corruption" could be a principle to unite the West, so watching the UK government whipping its MPs to overlook one of their colleague's misuse of public office for private gain is -- to be honest -- extremely depressing.
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There should be a special circle of hell (perhaps modelled after the waiting room at Hereford station in January) reserved for ignorant British no-mark politicians who democ-splain freedom to Europeans who risked their lives for it.
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Worry not, crooks and thieves! Britain will still be selling astoundingly opaque shell companies and scrutiny-evading solutions to whoever wants them, while failing to enforce its own regulations, so whatever sanctions are imposed will be easily evaded.
Today I will introduce a sanctions regime that will target people who have committed the gravest human rights violations. Global Britain will be an even stronger force for good in the world, in the years ahead.
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I know calling people a "KGB agent" is a bit of a cliché, but Patriarch Kirill actually was. He also ran Russia's largest post-Soviet cigarette importing racket in the 1990s. Odd/disturbing, but true.
A priest from a village near
#Russia
's Kostroma gave an anti-war sermon last Sunday. So he will be on trial for "discrediting the Russian armed forces."
And at the same time, Patriarch Kirill said that the war is taking place because "people in Donbas don't want gay parades."
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In his interview with
@mrjamesob
,
@OborneTweets
says he initially backed Boris Johnson because he was finding politics so boring, but he now realises that boringness is under-rated. I could certainly live without the endless soap opera side of the Boris Johnson show.
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For the record, I think Rybolovlev bought the mansion from Trump at any inflated price so as to take advantage of Florida's "homestead" asset protection rules (since he was going through a divorce at the time), rather than to buy influence. But I appreciate others think otherwise
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@JolyonMaugham
Q: What's the difference between Britain's anti-corruption agencies and the Loch Ness Monster?
A: The Loch Ness Monster has been seen in the wild.
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I've got a piece on the Guardian today, about how the UK sold Putin's key ally in Ukraine pretty everything he wanted. If you want to understand the background to the failure to act against oligarchs now, this is it.
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Dear Companies House, if you're reading this, please look into the fraudulent misuse of limited partnerships, which have helped conceal the laundering of billions of pounds, instead of prosecuting an imaginative activist and leaving him 12,000 pounds poorer? /ends
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Perhaps they could all sign the deal somewhere in central Europe, in a country with good ties to both sides? Budapest is nice.
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Want to launder money? Let me help you with that in five easy steps.
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If I was a newspaper editor, I'd be more concerned about current MPs who've taken payment from Russian, Ukrainian and Azeri oligarchs, than about Jeremy Corbyn meeting a random Czecho in the 1980s. This may be why I'm not a newspaper editor.
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The contrast between listening to
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
and
@RhonddaBryant
on the radio was just remarkable. One obfuscating, ad hominem, muddying; the other clear, honest and passionate. More from Sir Chris, and less from "sir" Jacob please!
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Always a bit baffled by why someone whose journalism is published by Rupert Murdoch is mainstream media, while someone broadcasting to millions via channels owned by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Google is somehow an insurgent.
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Btw, if you'd like to know the role that a Jersey shell company called FIMACO played in the rise of Vladimir Putin to the top job in Russia, you'll just have to read Moneyland. Spoiler: it's pretty sordid.
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Dear Irish people angry that I said Ireland's a tax haven "stealing as much revenue from the rest of the world as possible".
I wrote a book ('Butler to the World') about how Britain enables financial crime, so there's no need to tell me how bad the UK is. I already know, thanks
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Not arguing with this.
@OliverBullough
That may have been part of it, but every time Trump filed for bankruptcy, the Russians were the ones who helped him get solvent again by paying exorbitant prices for his real estate, especially in New York.
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Wow. Air Commodore Carl Scott writes his own chapter for Butler to the World.
Extraordinary letter in
@ft
from former UK defence attaché at Moscow embassy - we warned you about Putin but you listened to the City instead
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The St Petersburg mosque holds 5,000 worshippers. When it opened in 1913, it was the largest mosque in Europe. Mercifully, it will still be there long after this hate-peddler has shuffled off.
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When your friend tells you he's *NEVER SEEN* the well-preserved Magna Carta in Salisbury Cathedral.
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The reason Biden wanted Shokin sacked is because he was a terrible prosecutor, whose underlings sabotaged a UK investigation into Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma. So the truth is the precise opposite of what this wally is claiming.
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How America went from being the best place in the world to get rich, to the best place in the world to *stay* rich. A piece I wrote on the unlikeliest tax haven there is -- South Dakota.
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Russia, a country that banned disabled children from being adopted by Americans to try to get a travel ban on corrupt officials lifted, never uses people as pawns.
"Russia never uses people as pawns," Kremlin spox says when asked about possibility of Paul Whelan being swapped for Maria Butina.
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One way to fight dark money is to stop it from buying airtime. Please sign this petition to ask the BBC to stop allowing "think tanks" that are really lobbyists onto the air.
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We will find the culprits, whatever it takes, and see how much they'll pay for a game of tennis with leading members of the government.
It’s outrageous that a chemical weapon was used against Alexey Navalny. We have seen first-hand the deadly consequences of Novichok in the UK. The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny – we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done.
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Politicians are gonna politician.
But the rest of us don't have to indulge them, so let's not. 15/15.
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Just found this 1976 letter from the Alabama Attorney General to a KKK ringleader in the
@LettersOfNote
newsletter, and it made me delighted.
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Have the dolphins changed sides? Could change the whole balance of power in the Black Sea.
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First he came for Chechnya,
And we didn't do anything much because £££
Then he came for Georgia
$$$
Then he came for Crimea
€€€
Now he's come for Ukraine
Are there enough people left un-bought to do anything much, eh,
@BorisJohnson
?
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The phenomenon of the offshore-owned grouse moor is something I definitely would have mentioned in Moneyland had it not been so bonkers that it would never have occurred to me.
Rishi Sunak's constituency, Richmond (Yorks), contains at least 15 grouse moors by my reckoning (see ), inc. 4 registered in offshore tax havens (Robert Miller's Gunnerside Estate, Reeth Estate, East Arkengarthdale & Saudi prince's South Walden Moor):
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I love this chart, which studies the seasonal migration of the ultra-rich as if they were wildebeest.
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Kleptocracy is inherently a transnational problem and needs a transnational solution. I really hope this is the start of that.
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Translation: Nigel Farage demands we keep buying fossil fuels from Vladimir Putin.
I am launching a new campaign to kill of Boris Johnson’s ruinous green agenda.
We demand a referendum on Net Zero.
Read all about it in the Mail on Sunday.
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Why do politicians keep chucking out this chaff?
Because journalists keep publishing it, don't query if it'd work, don't wonder if there are other things government should be doing instead, and don't chase up the previous gimmicks to ask what happened to them. 14/n
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America is forcing Germany to militarise. It's an interesting historical moment.
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