(London) London said on Saturday that it wanted to strengthen its legislative arsenal to sanction “more harshly and quickly” the “corrupt elites” linked to the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow promising for its part “measures of retaliation”.
Posted at 11:22
The announcement comes as London is regularly criticized by the opposition and members of the Conservative majority for not fighting vigorously enough against the questionable flows of Russian money that have been pouring into the United Kingdom for years.
Treasury Secretary John Glen told the BBC on Saturday that the government wanted to act “harder and faster” to sanction oligarchs and companies linked to the Russian government.
“What we’re trying to do is make it easier to have a legal basis to act,” he added.
To crack down on these “corrupt elites”, the executive said in a statement that it would present amendments to this end to its bill aimed at combating economic crime, introduced on Tuesday in Parliament.
These amendments will also allow London to align “more quickly” with the sanctions imposed on individuals by the European Union, the United States or Canada.
We will increase the pressure on these criminal elites who try to launder their money on British soil and tighten the grip on corruption. They will have nowhere to hide.
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in a press release
Moscow denounced for its part “the sanctions hysteria in which London has played one of the main roles, if not the main role”, promising “proportional and severe retaliatory measures” which will “undoubtedly lead to the disruption of British interests in Russia”.
This initiative reflects the “choice” made by the British government of an “open confrontation with Russia”, added the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova, seeing it as “Russophobia”.
The British bill will be fast-tracked in the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament, on Monday, before a “fast-track” review in the House of Lords to have the law passed “as soon as possible”, according to the executive. .
Among the measures put forward, the deadline for foreign companies to declare their shareholding structure will be shortened from 18 to 6 months, and fines will be increased in the event of an infringement.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine at the end of February, like other Western countries, London has announced a series of sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs and financial institutions, as well as the freezing of Vladimir Putin’s assets.