Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 February 2022 [Draft]
The condemnation of Russia’s declaration of war on Ukraine must be absolute and the reaction must be exceptional. The UK’s pitiful action thus far in the sanctioning of three individuals and five banks was simply waving a green flag to Putin. He will not care about sanctions unless they are so strong as to imperil the Russian economy, including the entirety of his inner-circle oligarchs and their involvement in international corruption and money laundering. Action such as that will require us to be willing to accept some costs.
Further Russian aggression will see countless innocent people, including women and children, killed, maimed, left homeless and destitute, with their future in tatters.
As declared in my entry in the register of interests, I am a director of the REVIVE Campaign, which advocates for the victims of conflict and explosive weapons. For some time now, we have been deeply concerned about Ukraine and her people. Parts of Ukraine still remain heavily contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance from previous conflicts.
The fog of war will make it even more difficult for those of us working in the humanitarian space to have an accurate picture of where the victims are and the extent of harm. Of course, it is always the innocent who suffer most in conflicts.
However, UK action thus far has hardly reached the level of feeble. In January 2017, David Leask in The Herald reported on an accusation by Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau that a Scottish limited partnership was at the heart of a major arms scandal. That was part of Ukraine’s crackdown on corruption. Calls from the then SNP MP, Roger Mullin, for the security minister, Ben Wallace, to launch a detailed investigation fell on deaf ears. The UK Government still has no equivalent of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau and has never launched a major crackdown on corruption and money laundering.
In earlier debates, I have stated that £190 billion of financial crime plus £100 billion of money laundering occurs every year in the UK. Presiding Officer, I was wrong to quote the figure of £290 billion—I have underestimated the amount of money laundering. The UK’s National Crime Agency has stated that, because of the presence of the City of London’s financial sector,
“there is a realistic possibility”
that it is
“annually in the hundreds of billions of pounds”.
Money laundering on a gigantic scale, a significant proportion of which will involve Russian institutions and oligarchs, has been met with indifference for years. An economic crime bill has been talked about and then dropped—I will watch to see whether it will now proceed.
Mention has been made of the case of the Russian laundromat scandal, in which 113 Scottish limited partnerships were at the heart of over $20 billion that was being laundered from Russian banks. That is a direct stain on our international brand. One of those involved was Igor Putin, Vladimir Putin’s cousin.
The UK Government should have closed down massive corruption and money laundering long before now. The oligarchs and corrupt institutions have been given a free pass. Real and substantive action must now be taken. We will not be standing with the Ukrainian people if we do not act decisively now.
16:27