Rich Russians ask Kremlin if they can leave Britain

By Tom Parfitt

Wealthy Russians in Britain have written to President Putin to ask if they can return home without fear of arrest as the government tightens the screw on oligarchs suspected of corruption.

Boris Titov, Russia’s “business tsar”, said that a list of more than ten businessmen who wanted to leave London had been passed to the Kremlin.

“It’s with the president,” he said. “As yet the list is not final as we continue to receive applications.” He did not name the Russians who had asked to be considered for safe repatriation.

Mr Titov, 57, was speaking in London after The Times revealed on Saturday that the High Court was preparing to issue new unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) to freeze and recover the property of individuals unable to explain how they came to acquire assets in Britain valued at more than £50,000.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, said he wanted to crack down on criminals and corrupt politicians like the Russians in London depicted in the BBC drama McMafia.

Mr Titov said the people who wanted to return home to Moscow were those “who managed to leave [Russia] and not end up in a pre-trial detention centre”. They had then become the subjects of criminal investigation in Russia and had remained on wanted lists for years, he told the Tass news agency.

“This can go on for years and decades. Some people have been living [away] for 20 years and cannot come home because a criminal case was opened,” he added. “There are no longer any accusations towards them, even Interpol has removed them from the wanted list, but the case in Moscow continues to hang over them.”

Russian media said that Mr Titov held a meeting with about 40 Russian businesspeople in London on Saturday. It is not known if any are on the list. They included Ilya Yurov, former chairman of Trust Bank, and Georgy Trefilov, former co-owner of the Marta holding, both wanted in Russia.

Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the flamboyant former owner of the mobile phone retailer Yevroset, confirmed that he was present at the meeting but said a list was not discussed. “I think that this is a simulation of pre-election activity,” he told Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Mr Chichvarkin, 43, has lived in London since leaving Russia in 2008. He was later charged there with extortion and kidnapping. Prosecutors closed the cases against him in 2011.

In October last year he said that while Mr Putin was in power he would return to Moscow “only in a coffin”.

Mr Titov, who is expected to run as a minor candidate in Russia’s presidential election in March, was made the country’s business commissioner by Mr Putin in 2012. He criticised the introduction of UWOs, saying they would damage London’s reputation as a refuge for affluent foreigners.

“This new form of treating the country’s residents is a very bad signal,” Mr Titov said. “It shows that the UK’s political leadership has begun to play a completely new policy, starting a fight against the wealthy, so the country will lose this status of haven for the rich.”

The commissioner, who lived in Britain in the 1990s, said he would struggle to produce paperwork for his own “apartment on the edge of London” if it was demanded of him.

Speaking on his visit to London, he insisted the city benefited from granting sanctuary to the world’s wealthy: “For many decades, the UK lived by granting tax and civil shelters to many rich people; London developed so quickly and dynamically mostly because many rich people from Russia, China and Arab countries came here.”

It was unclear what kind of candidates have asked Mr Putin for a potential amnesty. Several prominent tycoons have been charged since leaving Russia.

One of the most prominent, Andrey Borodin, former president of the Bank of Moscow, moved to Britain in 2011 after an investigation into an alleged massive fraudulent loan deal was launched. He bought a property near Henley-on-Thames for £140 million.

Mr Borodin received political asylum in 2013 and has criticised the Russian authorities, saying the fraud allegation was fabricated after he resisted a state takeover of his bank. However, given the scale of allegations against him he is not expected to be on the list.

Anti-corruption campaigners in Britain have said Russian and Azerbaijani government officials with property in London are more likely to come under scrutiny than opponents of the Kremlin.

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