Three wins in cleaning up London’s dirty money

Hey there,

Summer should be a quiet time for a newsroom in the UK, like mine. Parliament is in recess and the headlines are filled with tales of whales wearing salmon as hats or eels in the Thames on cocaine. But this year has been different. Political news has carried on throughout the summer and sometimes the constant stream of serious issues has felt relentless.

But closer to home, in my own team at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, we’ve seen success story after success story. My team’s called the Enablers, and we investigate the people and systems in the UK that make corruption and wrongdoing possible.

That can mean sifting through thousands of pages of financial documents, something my colleague Simon Lock has a real knack for. It can also mean reporting trips to meet sources across the world, which my colleague Ed Siddons has been lucky enough to take on recently.

Far from being idle this summer, our work has had a real world impact. A few highlights stand out.

If you were one of my first ever readers, you’ll remember me telling you about Vitesse Arnhem. For those who have joined since then, a quick recap: A few years ago, Simon was digging into the financial affairs of Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who once owned Chelsea football club. (Simon’s not really stopped since, and was still putting out stories about Abramovich earlier this year as well – more on that later.) 

But in 2023 he revealed that Vitesse, a Dutch club that played in the Netherlands’ highest tier of football, was being secretly bankrolled by Abramovich. This was something many people had suspected for a long time, but nobody could unequivocally prove.

Since this big reveal, Vitesse’s finances have come under scrutiny. This summer, the club first had its licence to play professionally revoked, then was offered a reprieve after an appeals court overturned this decision.

The process has been long and drawn out, but it means that dirty money in sport is being challenged – and that accountability is possible. If clubs can’t conceal questionable finances, it should keep things fairer on and off the pitch.

In another win for the team, back in 2023, Ed reported that the libel firm Carter-Ruck (known in Private Eye as Carter-F*ck) had acted for OneCoin, the company behind a multibillion-dollar fraud, and its co-founder, Ruja Ignatova, a fugitive from justice who is now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

Carter-Ruck sent threatening letters to a victim who had spoken out about the fraud, threatening her with a defamation lawsuit. (Again, longtime readers will remember that these strategic libel threats make me extremely angry – and extremely motivated to change how the UK treats this kind of legal action.)

As a result of this story, the tax lawyer Dan Neidle complained to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. It opened an investigation and just last month we found out that a partner at the law firm, Claire Gill, is now being prosecuted. It’s very rare for this to happen and I’ve asked Ed to explain a bit more about this below.

Finally, just as summer was coming to an end, Simon had another win in his Abramovich work. Earlier in the year we made a splash when we revealed that Abramovich evaded millions of euros in VAT on his fleet of superyachts. Tax should have been due in Cyprus, where his company was based, as well as in EU countries where the yachts cruised, refuelled and were maintained: Germany, Italy, France and Spain.

In August the Cypriot tax authority filed criminal charges with the aim of recovering the unpaid tax plus penalties. It’s aiming to recover €25m. The company at the heart of this scheme, Blue Ocean Yacht Management, which was wound up last year despite owing millions in VAT, has been ordered to be re-registered and its officers reinstated so they can be held to account.

This is huge. It proves that the ultra wealthy are not above the law and that countries can take steps to redress wrongdoing.

Although countries can act, not all of them do... Despite TBIJ’s estimate that Abramovich may owe HMRC up to £1 billion, HMRC has yet to respond to our findings. We wrote to officials with offers to brief them, but they never wrote back. The reporting involved two years of combing through leaked files from Cyprus and few other journalists have the depth of knowledge we now hold on this issue. We even offered to share with HMRC how Abramovich had structured his wealth in the run up to being sanctioned, which could be of particular interest. Again: tumbleweed.

I’m not giving up. We are now working with politicians to try and encourage action from the taxman. If we’ve done the sums right, the total amount owed by Abramovich would be bigger than the budget for rebuilding five hundred schools in England. It would also surpass former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s record tax settlement of £653m last year. The UK needs that money.

“For decades, London lawyers have gone after reporters, not just in the UK but across the world. Sometimes it’s to correct errors in reporting, but often it’s to silence reporting that is true and overwhelmingly in the public interest.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there’s been growing attention on dirty money flowing through London – not just from Russia, but from oligarchs and kleptocrats worldwide. Defamation threats are one of the most important weapons in the kleptocrat’s arsenal to stop anyone from scrutinising the source of their wealth.

There was already reporting on Carter-Ruck and similar firms, mostly by Private Eye, but there wasn’t a long-form piece tying it all together: the historical roots of English libel law, how the libel industry was born, and what it does in the shadows when it thinks no one is watching.

One case we focused on in the piece was a woman, Jen McAdam, who lost her father’s inheritance to OneCoin. McAdam tried to raise awareness and received a letter from Claire Gill at Carter-Ruck, threatening defamation proceedings. Jen was an ordinary person, not a reporter or lawyer, and didn’t have the money to equip herself with a proper media defence team. It struck me that she shouldn’t have been fair game.

The libel industry is not something that is purely a threat to newspapers and investigative journalists; ordinary people are at risk, especially in a social media age where everyone is a publisher.

A lawyer, Dan Neidle, looked into our investigation and ended up reporting Carter-Ruck to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA opened an investigation, concluding there was a case to be heard and that Claire Gill may have sent “an improper threat of litigation”.

I went to the first hearing. It was well attended online, not just by journalists but by lawyers. The case has tapped into media frustration at costly, bellicose threats and broader public concerns: that the justice system can be weaponised by the ultra-wealthy and that free speech is being curtailed, not by cancel culture, but by libel lawyers.” 

Thank you for reading and to all our new readers who have joined recently – it’s great that there are so many of us taking an interest in stories that are changing the world (or at least trying to!) 

For those of you who recall my edition about Martha’s rule, I have another update. The rule, which allows families to seek an urgent second opinion in hospital if they are concerned about a loved one’s care, is now being rolled out across England. It’s an incredible victory for Merope Mills and Paul Laity, whose daughter Martha died of sepsis in 2021. Their work, and their dedication to telling Martha’s story, has saved hundreds of lives. 

We’ll be back with more next week. Until then, if you want to support this newsletter and the Bureau’s work to keep an eye on oligarchs – even when the taxman won’t – you can help us by becoming a member of our Insiders community.

Take care,