The eight people, described by Boris Johnson as having “the blood of the Ukrainian people in their hands”, were given the right to live in the UK after pledging to invest at least 2 2m under the controversial Level 1 investor visa system. Trafford Secretary of the Interior Lady Williams said in response to a parliamentary question this week that on March 18, eight of the oligarchs who had been sanctioned for invading Ukraine “had been recognized as having or had been licensed as a Level 1 ( investor) immigrant or as a level 1 dependent immigrant (investor). The eight people were not named and the Interior Ministry declined to give further details. On March 10, the UK government said 18 Russian businessmen, worth a total of 30 30 billion, had been sanctioned since the invasion began. Hundreds more have been added to the list since then. Those on the list include Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea FC. Alisher Usmanov, the steel and mining tycoon described by the EU as one of Putin’s “beloved oligarchs”. and Andrey Guryev Jr., whose family reportedly owns Witanhurst, a mansion in Highgate, north London, which is London’s second largest home after Buckingham Palace. “For too long, the government has been on the red carpet for Putin’s friends,” said Leila Moran, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokeswoman. These people should never be able to buy their way to the UK with illegally acquired wealth. “We now need to know how many others who have been granted gold visas owe their wealth to the Putin regime and why the government has not imposed sanctions on them. “Ministers must stop dragging their feet and finally publish the revision on these visas.” The government abolished the golden visa system in February as fears grew that Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. Interior Minister Priti Patel said she was closing the program as part of an effort to stop “corrupt elites threatening our national security and pushing dirty money into our cities”. The program, which started in 2008, has allowed people with at least εκατο 2 million in investment funds and a bank account in the UK to apply for residence permits with their family. The speed with which applicants for indefinite leave were granted was accelerated by how much money they planned to invest in the UK: εκατο 2 million πέντε took five years, 10 10 million την reduced the waiting time to two. The Interior Ministry has issued 2,581 investor visas to Russian citizens since the regime was introduced in 2008. During a “period of blind faith” between 2008 and 2015, 97% of investors underwent rigorous checks on the legality of their wealth, leading to concerns about unwanted people slipping into the country, critics say. According to an anti-corruption watchdog, 6,312 gold visas – half of those issued – had been checked for “potential national security risks”. Dr Susan Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “This shows once again how dangerous the golden national visa regime was for the United Kingdom and is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. The government must urgently publish its review of the golden visas issued between 2008 and 2015, when minimal checks were made on applicants’ source of wealth. “We also need to know how many first-class visas issued to Russian nationals since 2008 have been found to pose a threat to national security and what steps the government is taking to revoke visas where necessary.” Subscribe to the daily Business Today email or follow the Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk Following the 2018 Salisbury poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a former Russian military officer and his daughter, the government launched a review of visa-granted investors from 2008-2015. The review has not yet been published. Meanwhile, new investors continued to benefit from the visa system. The latest figures from the Interior Ministry show that 798 investor visas were issued in the year to September 2021, of which 82 were issued to Russians – the highest total of 12 months since 2018. The plan remained open, despite parliament’s joint intelligence and security committee saying in 2020 that it was “welcoming the oligarchs with open arms”. “It provided ideal mechanisms by which illicit financing could be recycled through what is referred to as the ‘laundry’ of London,” the commission said. “Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’ and there are many Russians with very close ties to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene and are accepted because of their wealth. “This level of integration – in London’s in particular – means that the measures now being taken by the government are not precautionary, but rather a limitation of the damage.”
