Are London's oligarchs feeling the pinch?
Are London's oligarchs feeling the pinch?
Plus: Is David Cameron feeling the punch?
Hello and welcome to another week in London. In today’s issue we’re catching up on some of our favourite Russian billionaires and playing referee in some of the art world’s filthiest fights.
On February 23, just one day before Russia invaded Ukraine, we ran an issue with the headline Welcome to Londongrad, home of tax-dodging robots, super-rich cellists and bust-loving billionaires. That issue was prompted by Priti Patel’s scrapping of Tier 1 investor visas as part of the government’s “renewed crackdown on illicit finance and fraud.”
At the time, we noted that this kind of measure had been tried before (most notably after the Salisbury poisonings) but without much effect. So we thought now that three months have passed it would be a good time to check in on our friendly, neighbourhood oligarchs and see how they’re holding up in the face of all these ‘crackdowns’.
Ninety-nine problems but being rich ain't one
This is a good time as any to do this, because The Times just published the 34th edition of its annual Rich List, so we’ve got a nice, up-to-date record of who has lost (or gained) the most.
The most notable fall in the Times charts is Roman Abramovich, who the paper estimates has lost about half his fortune, leaving him with a paltry £6 billion.
Other London-based ‘casualties’ of the sanctions were friends Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev. But don’t feel too sorry for them, they all still placed comfortably in the top 50 wealthiest people in the whole of the UK.
What about Moscow-born manure magnate Moshe Kantor who was once given the prestigious Order of Honour by Putin “in recognition of his professional achievements and longstanding fair work”? Or Alisher Usmanov, the plastic bag baron who once owned a big stake in Arsenal, along with his 19th-century Beechwood House estate in Hampstead and a mansion at 4 Curzon Square? Both had some kind of sanctions imposed on them earlier this year. Surely their wealth has been dented…
Well, Usmanov has gone up one place to number 6 in the Times list, and Kantor has gone up a whopping 28 places to number 20.
How to beat the big freeze
One way that the oligarchs are sidestepping the worst of the sanctions is simply by giving their stuff to other people through what The Times calls “elaborate games of ‘pass the parcel’”.
For example, Usmanov’s Hyde Park home and that Surrey mansion (estimated worth: £82m) don’t actually belong to him any more. They have been “transferred into irrevocable trusts” which means he technically no longer owns them but is able to “use them on a rental basis.”
Usmanov transferred the ownership of his 512ft superyacht to his sister, but it was still ‘frozen’ by the authorities. Which leads us to the biggest snag with the whole sanctions plan: freezing something isn’t the same as seizing something.
As this article in Super Yacht News explains (and this is the one and only time we we will link to Super Yacht News), when you freeze somebody’s assets it’s a temporary measure. You still have to give that yacht back at some point, and if the government did try and confiscate an oligarch’s possessions then, “this would allow the owner to engage in due process and challenge the confiscation of the asset in court.” And, as one London-based consultant told The Times, “If governments want to spend a fortune going into legal battle with oligarchs, this could all go on for years and cost the taxpayer a fortune in legal fees.”
Putting the PR into ‘Protected’
As Politico reported last month, the oligarch PR engine has gone into overdrive since February, with figures like Leonard ‘Sir Len’ Blavatnik (number 4 on this year’s Times list) going on a charm offensive to make sure the press don’t link them to the Kremlin or even describe them as oligarchs. According to someone Politico spoke to, Blavantnik’s team of whitewashers had been “very direct and very aggressive in pushing back on that framing that he is an oligarch.”
All that aggression probably came in very useful the other week when some emails came to light questioning Blavantinik’s 2021 donation of £7.5m to help acquire the Honresfield Library (now knowns as the Blavatnik Honresfield Library), much of which is housed at the British Library.
The most vulgar example of that PR mechanism at work comes in the June edition of Tatler magazine, which would like to introduce you to the “high-rolling charitable names” (including Blavatnik) who are “championing museums and galleries” now that “the Sacklers are out”. Just a reminder (if it was needed) that the Sacklers aren’t ‘out’ because they were seen in the same dress twice or used the wrong fork - they are ‘out’ because their greed created a mass opioid addiction that killed around 600,000 Americans.
Pickled eggs and cherry-pickers
One unintended victim of the sanctions is the V&A who have got themselves into a bit of a pickle over a Fabergé Egg that was loaned to them by an organisation called Link of Times Foundation. The Foundation, which runs the the Fabergé Museum in St Petersberurg, is run by Vitkor Vekselberg, who is a close friend of Len Blavatnik and a fully-sanctioned oligarch. All of which means that, if the V&A give the egg back then they could be seen to be financially aiding a sanctioned oligarch; but if they keep it on display they could be seen as benefiting from the possessions of a sanctioned oligarch.
One London institution that has almost certainly benefited financially from oligarch money over the years is Harrods. But last week the store sent out an email to those customers “who it appears might currently or usually be resident in Russia,” to let them know that they are “subject to the regulations and we will be unable to supply you with any restricted luxury goods” that are worth more than £300.
Ironically it’s you the tax payer who might be taking the biggest hit as a result of the sanctions. Vice reported last week that the police operation to remove four protesters from Oleg Deripaska’s west London mansion in March cost over £80,000. That money went on the deployment of 176 officers as well as “nine police vans, squad cars, riot police, a helicopter as well as a ladder and a JCB cherry-picker.”
Finally, there might be one good thing comes out of all this. Peter Morgan (The Crown, Frost/Nixon etc) has written a new play based on the lives of real Russian oligarchs and it will star Tom Hollander as one-time Putin ally, Boris Berezovsky. The play, called Patriots, has been “fast-tracked to have its world premiere at London’s Almeida Theatre in July”.
Arty-Bargy
It’s not only Fabergé Eggs that are getting the art world in bother this week. Apparently, Jake Chapman ‘nearly punched’ David Cameron during Gallery Weekend.
The former PM and his wife turned up at Chapman’s first ever solo show at the Paradise Row gallery in Mayfair, which surprised the artist who didn’t remember inviting him. According to the Art Newspaper Chapman asked Dave, “What the fuck are you doing here? It’s no good for you, and it’s no good for me.” before considering “a forceable ejection.” He eventually decided against physical violence after spotting the “hefty-looking, unblinking ex-military man” who was accompanying the Camerons.
Instead, Chapman posted this image on his Instagram account (an effort some might argue is more impactful than the stuff on the walls of the gallery).
Maybe the longest running row in art circles is that of the Elgin Marbles, and if you’re interested in the saga of the Parthenon friezes then this profile of William St Clair in the Telegraph is definitely worth a read. It was St Clair who first revealed that the British Museum had “irreparably damaged the friezes” in their attempts to ‘clean’ them; and it was his research that showed that Elgin’s ‘acquisition’ of the Marbles was not entirely legal (or necessary).
There’s just one other bit of curator-based controversy to clear up before we go. You might remember that last year, senior curator Mark Godfrey ‘left’ Tate Modern after publicly condemning the gallery’s decision to postpone a Philip Guston exhibition until 2024 “over concerns about his paintings depicting Ku Klux Klansmen”.
Well the exhibition has begun a little earlier than 2024, but it will still be a while before we see it at Tate Modern. Guston’s painting went on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston last week alongside “new curatorial and extra-curatorial input” that includes a note from a trauma specialist. After Boston the exhibition will go to Houston, then Washington DC ,before it finally gets to London in 2023 for a 3 October opening.
5 little bits
Can confidence in the Met get any lower? Yes, apparently it can. The latest figures from City Hall show that trust in the force is at an “all time low” with 57% of Londoners believing “the Met can be relied upon to be there when needed”. That’s down 2% on the previous quarter.
The row over what happens to the old M&S building on Oxford Street continues. Last week, several “leading figures in the worlds of architecture, property, heritage and the arts” signed an open letter to Michael Gove demanding a public inquiry into the plans to demolish the historic store.
Apparently Sadiq Khan decided not to take up Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s invitation to visit them while he was in L.A. because “he was keen to avoid any awkward moments when he saw Prince William and the Queen within days of his return.”
The Telegraph (paywall alert) has taken a good look at The City of London Corporation’s Destination City programme, which aims to bring tourists into the Square Mile. Apparently they’re going to use “immersive technology to bring Londinium most vividly back to life.”
A 27-year-old artist from Tonbridge has pledged to “draw the entire city of London”. So far he’s completed “0.02% of the 1.6 billion metre squared area of buildings he wishes to cover.”