Report comment

A bit rich coming from HM Government who, between 2008 and 2015, oversaw about 3,000 high net-worth individuals, about a quarter of them Russians, taking advantage of the Tier 1 Investment Scheme established by Gordon Brown.

This meant that if you had a spare £2 million, you could invest it in the UK, get temporary residence and then apply for permanent residence within five years. For £10 million, the wait shortened to two years.

For seven years from 2008, checks on the source of the money coming into Britain under the scheme were lax, with the Home Office believing that the banks were checking it out, while the banks thought the Home Office was doing so. Since the safeguards were tightened up in 2015, the number of applications has dwindled to a trickle.

But hey, let's blame the lawyers, not HM Govt who have thrown about residence permits, British passports and rubber stamped asylum applications like confetti to some of the biggest crooks and tax dodgers the world has ever seen.

Dasvidaniya !