Why stop at the Russian oligarchs?

No sooner had Roman Abramovich, newly targeted by the UK’s sanctions on Russian oligarchs, announced that he was selling Chelsea Football Club than the feeding frenzy began. An athletics icon, City grandees, and even a respected The Times columnist, each representing different US multi-billionaires, descended on London in a race to buy the club. Meanwhile, a host of London properties belonging to Russian oligarchs entered a long-overdue process of liquidation. What took so long?

To put it bluntly: the West’s legal foundations.

True, Western leaders encouraged the inflows. David Cameron, then UK prime minister, appealed in 2011 to a Moscow audience to “invest” in Britain. But it wasn’t hard to convince the oligarchs to flood London with their money. Western countries’ legislation prevents governments and the public not only from disturbing wealth stored in their jurisdictions but also from even knowing where and how much of it there is. Why else would countless corporations register in the US state of Delaware, using post office box addresses that guarantee their owners anonymity?

In fact, Western democracies grant foreign wealth even more protection from scrutiny. In a 2021 report aptly titled “The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem,” the London-based think tank Chatham House revealed that the golden visas for sale to oligarchs from all over the world were granted after “checks … [that] were the sole responsibility of the law firms and wealth managers representing them.”

In my country, Greece, following our state’s effective bankruptcy in 2010, an oligarch could buy a no-questions-asked golden visa, which also came with a Schengen visa (and the opportunity to live and travel anywhere in the European Union), for a measly €250,000. Similar visas are sold by other fiscally stressed eurozone countries, fuelling a race to the bottom that the world’s oligarchs greatly appreciate.

While there is good reason to focus on Russian money, now that Russian bombs are destroying Ukrainian cities, it is puzzling that only Russian billionaires are called oligarchs. Why is oligarchy, which means rule (arche) by the few (oligoi), considered an exclusively Russian phenomenon? Are the Saudi or Emirati princes not oligarchic? Do US billionaires, like those now flocking to buy Chelsea FC, smuggle less money out of their country than their Russian counterparts do, or have less political clout? Do they use such power better than the Russians?

Russia’s wealthiest 0.01% (the top 1% of the top 1%) have taken about half their wealth, around $200-billion, out of Russia and stashed it in the UK and other havens. At the same time, the US’s wealthiest 0.01% have taken about $1.2-trillion out of the US, principally to avoid paying taxes. So, in terms of magnitude, US plutocrats match every dollar that Russian plutocrats stash abroad to escape scrutiny with $10 of their own.