Britain hunts for inexplicably wealthy foreigners: Azerbaijanis are the first, Russians are next in line - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
Переклад цього матеріалу українською мовою з російської було автоматично здійснено сервісом Google Translate, без подальшого редагування тексту.
Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

Britain is hunting inexplicably rich foreigners: Azerbaijanis first, Russians next

London ceases to be a quiet haven for wealthy men of all stripes.

Photo: Depositphoto

The British decided to make life more difficult for corrupt officials and criminals who had come in large numbers and for the first time used a new weapon - the right to demand confiscation of the property of those who cannot prove that it was acquired in good faith, writes Air Force

The first victim of the new campaign was the wife of a state banker from Azerbaijan, convicted in the homeland for embezzlement. The court allowed the authorities to issue her debut warrant, and now she has to explain where tens of millions of dollars came from to buy a house in a fashionable area of ​​London and a manor with a golf course in a posh province.

The extravagant lifestyle of the wife of the former head of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, Zamira Khadzhiyeva, made her an ideal target in this war for the first indicative attack by the National Crime Control Agency of the United Kingdom (NCA). And it is already preparing the following, including against the Russians.

Khadzhiyeva calls herself a victim of unjust persecution in Azerbaijan and says that everything is acquired legally. The tabloids relish the details of her millions spending in an expensive department store, buying a private plane and discussing her wine cellar.

Hunting season is open, bets are made. Russian service BBC understood the rules of the game.

Who can come

"We're getting information from everywhere, from other law enforcement agencies, overseas and from non-government sectors like Transparency International, and we're looking at it closely," Donald Toon, the NCA's director of economic and cyber crime, told the BBC.

“We have a lot of cases, and if we talk about the next six to eight cases, we are focusing on people from Africa, South Asia, the former USSR and Russia,” he said, without naming names.

The target of the campaign is organized crime and foreign corrupt officials who have decided to invest what they stole in the UK, primarily in real estate.

Activists and outraged citizens have long accused the authorities of turning a blind eye to the origin of capital and turning London into a “laundering hub.” This year the discussion reached parliament, and the government began to act.

One of the new tools was a warrant obliging a person with assets in the UK in the amount of thousands of pounds from 50 to prove that they were bought with honestly earned money.

Five departments - tax and law enforcement - received the right to initiate similar requirements for two categories of people. The first is politicians, officials and people close to them from countries outside the European Economic Area. The second is those who are suspected of committing serious crimes in the UK or abroad.

However, there are important limitations.

Prosecutors and tax officials cannot issue a warrant themselves - they must go to court and convince the judge that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person is involved in corruption or crime, that his expenses clearly exceed his declared income, and that the assets in question are , belong to the suspect.

Difficulties often arise with this, since a significant amount of real estate is registered in offshore companies, and the law obliging the disclosure of ultimate beneficiaries will not come into effect until 2021. However, the ice has already broken, as evidenced by the first order authorized by the High Court.

“Critical in this case was the information that we received from the Virgin Islands and which allowed us to establish the connection of Zamira Khadzhieva with this property, registered through the island trusts. And we were able to gather enough information about her income to convince the court,” Toon said.

This is a breakthrough, rejoices former BBC correspondent Misha Glenny, author of the book McMafia about the latest Russian crime in Britain, which was adapted into a popular television series.

“It is important that they were able to obtain information from the Virgin Islands, which is notorious for embezzlers and organized crime hiding their wealth there. "This is a giant step forward in cleaning up Britain's reputation as a money laundering black hole," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

All take away and share

The first case is a touchstone, a test drive of the new law adopted back in February. It has already taken several months of legal proceedings, and so far the score is in favor of the government. However, whether the new mechanism will be able to start the first time depends on how events in this case develop in the coming months.

Photo: Depositphoto

In Great Britain, any initiative that infringes the rights of citizens on the legislative and executive branches of government usually begins to work only after it has passed through the crucible of the judicial system, where the best legal minds are able to take apart and make useless any unfinished law.

At the first stage of the confrontation, the NCA convinced the judge to issue a warrant. Now it's up to the wife of an Azerbaijani banker.

If Khadzhieva proves that she bought two houses for legally earned two dozen million pounds, they will close the case.

If not, the NCA will ask the court to confiscate the property and then sell it.

“These funds will initially become the property of the UK, and their future fate is the subject of direct discussions about the extent of repatriation between the country of origin of the money and the British government,” Toon said.

At this stage, the entire procedure is a civil investigation within the framework of an inquiry, and not a criminal prosecution. In other words, even if the property is seized and sold under the hammer, this does not make the former owner guilty. However, there is a caveat here too.

If the authorities consider that the person who received the warrant tried to circle them around his finger in the process of executing the order, they can start a criminal case that could result in a fine and two years in prison.

But this is a legal terra incognita, and law enforcement in terms of criminal prosecution will depend on how the first trials go and how prosecutors in court can avoid numerous pitfalls, primarily the presumption of innocence and the right not to incriminate oneself.

Read also on ForumDaily:

As an American, he sold a business worth $ 1,4 billion in the United States and launched a startup in Ukraine

As an immigrant from the USSR, brought to light the Brooklyn bribe judge and sued her children back

Miscellanea corruption rich London Britain Khadzhiev
Subscribe to ForumDaily on Google News

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis. 



 
1081 requests in 1,199 seconds.