The US and the UK have already committed to stop buying Russian oil and today President Biden is set to announce an end to most-favored-nation trading status for Russia as well. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe has joined sanctions on Russian banks but can’t afford to cut off Russian oil and gas because they are far too dependent upon it.

The UK may not be as dependent on Russian energy as the rest of Europe but it does have close connections to Russian oligarchs in another way. Today the NY Times published a video about these connections titled “How Putin Weaponized London’s Greed.” The presenter in this clip is Jonathan Pie, a fictitious newscaster who is actually the creation of a British comedian named Tom Walker. It’s sort of like the John Oliver show if John Oliver wasn’t his real name.

The story “Jonathan Pie” is telling here is basically the story of how Russian oligarchs transfer and spend a tremendous amount of money every year in London. Through shell companies they buy up valuable properties owned through shell companies, making it very difficult to know who owns what. Anyway, the first minute or so of this didn’t really grab me but once he got going I found it pretty interesting.

The largest private residence in London, Witanhurst (pictured above), is owned by Andrei Guryev, a Russian billionaire who made his money in fertilizer. The UK government is reportedly thinking about seizing some of these oligarch’s mansions in the same way Europe has been seizing Russian yachts.

Michael Gove has told cabinet colleagues that the government should seize lavish London properties that are owned by Kremlin-linked oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The housing secretary told a cabinet meeting on Thursday that more action was needed to clamp down on Russian dirty money being used to buy property in London, according to the Sunday Telegraph…

Research by anti-corruption campaigners Transparency International suggests that more than £1bn has been spent since 2016 on the London property market by corrupt Russian oligarchs and organised crime bosses.

But there’s already concern that the UK government may struggle to link properties to oligarchs and oligarchs to Putin because the paper trail has been intentionally clouded with shell companies. Even if it can be done it may take so long to do it legally that it won’t have much impact on the current war in Ukraine.

The information about Russian money laundering in London has been around for a while. One of the people driving that story is UK journalist and author Oliver Bullough who wrote a book about it back in 2015 titled “Money Land.” Last week, Bullough was featured in his own video laying out the story which you can watch here.

Finally, here’s a recent news report from CBS on the attempt to crackdown on these oligarch owned properties. In this clip, one of the oligarchs argues that while it may make life more difficult for him personally to have his property seized, it won’t have any ultimate impact on Ukraine because the war there is the work of one man, Vladimir Putin.