Built by the landowning Grosvenor family, and named after Eaton Hall, their Cheshire country house, the history of London’s Eaton Square could not be more English.
In the heart of well-heeled Belgravia, the five-storey Georgian townhouses that look out on six manicured private parks are among Britain’s most desirable addresses. But many residents are not UK taxpayers, and are more likely to be billionaire Russian oligarchs with some having had past relationships with Vladimir Putin.
Eaton Square has been nicknamed Red Square due to the amount of Russian-owned property there.
Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, who has a £10billion fortune, bought a £28million house there in 2003 – one of several mansions he owns in London. Another oligarch with property on the square is aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, believed to have a £3bn fortune. He is said to be close to Putin, and claims have been made that he is the premier’s “favourite industrialist”.
Many Russians have invested large amounts in London amid rumours of some Russian money being circulated through untraceable shell companies registered in tax havens.
A Transparency International probe identified property worth a total of at least £1bn bought in posh London areas using suspect funds from Russia.
There is no suggestion of anyone named using suspect funds.
Others with properties in the capital include Arsenal’s former largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov, whose wealth came from metal and mining. He owns 11-acre Beechwood House in Highgate, North London. Billionaire Eugene Shvidler is thought to live in Belgravia.
London-based oligarchs are among the 0.01% of Russians who own more of their country’s wealth than the bottom 99.8%. Many of Russia’s 144 million people live in poverty and as the President has no genuine competition in elections he can afford to focus more on the 0.01%.
Investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, who has been involved in bus tours of the oligarchs’ mansions, wrote: “No one has done more to channel the flood of money out of Russia than London’s army of lawyers, bankers and accountants; no one has been more accommodating of Putin’s oligarchs than Britain’s politicians; and, as a result, no one is more to blame than us for the fact Russia’s richest can treat war like a spectator sport.”
Critics say the Government must do more to stop some oligarchs hiding money here, as they could provide a financial war chest for Putin. By siphoning money into London property, Russians can disguise the origins of their money.
After the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergie Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, former PM Theresa May introduced a crackdown.
But in 2020, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee Russia Report called Russian influence in the UK “the new normal”.
Russian-born donors or individuals with business links to Russia have given nearly £2m to the Tory party or constituency associations since Boris Johnson took power in July 2019, Electoral Commission figures show.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called for new anti-corruption measures, writing recently: “Over almost 12 years of Tory government, the creeping tendrils of the Kremlin have been allowed to wrap themselves around the UK.”
Seven hundred wealthy Russians were among those allowed to enter the UK on Tier 1 investor visas between 2008 and 2015 in return for £2m, a period when no state checks were carried out. The Home Office is reviewing all visas granted during that period. If Putin does invade Ukraine, some oligarchs in Belgravia could see their assets frozen. For now, however, London remains the city of choice for many who benefited from the Soviet Union’s break-up.
