How to solve Britain’s dirty-money problem

OF THE BARRAGE of sanctions the West has inflicted on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the most symbolically powerful, if not the most economically consequential, have been those targeting the cronies of Vladimir Putin. Britain’s government trumpets the fact that it has announced measures against more Putin-linked plutocrats than any other country. It is less keen to talk about why that might be. London has long been a . Corrupt capital flows to Britain from all over the world, but no one doubts that Russian loot is a major contributor to a money-laundering problem that the National Crime Agency puts conservatively at £100bn ($125bn) a year.Dodgy money has been lured to London by some of the same things as the clean variety, including a long-standing openness to foreign investment and strong property rights. Another attraction, however, is the financial secrecy offered by both Britain and its network of offshore satellites, from Jersey to the Cayman Islands. That has helped make Britain murkier than classic havens such as Panama and Liechtenstein, according to a respected global financial-secrecy index. Political obsequiousness has also played a part. Successive governments looked to woo oligarchs and their billions—for instance, by hawking “investor visas” that gave them residency.