Tuesday 5 June 2018
The Marwari hegemony of Indian Media
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
A FRESH Cobrapost sting operation has shown a number of big media outfits accepting money to spread fake news and whip up religious hysteria to boost the BJP’s chances in the 2019 elections. The Cobrapost is held in high regard and its exposés in the past have helped the interests of Indian democracy. This one, however, has left one a bit confused. Did we need to bribe Goebbels to do what he was already good at doing and was likely to do anyway?
Another way of seeing the matter is through the ideological affinity and collusion that exists between most media houses and Hindutva, which makes them predisposed ideologically to align with the BJP. Congress has elements the coterie can support, mainly with regard to business leeway. Otherwise, Indira Gandhi’s nationalisation of the banks, which they owned, and her initial flirtation with the left in a Nehruvian romance won her the clique’s disapproval. Even Rajiv Gandhi went for their jugular when he exhorted Congress workers to shake the moneybags off their backs. The business clique’s preference for a non-Gandhi Congress leader makes eminent sense.
A straight reading of Akshaya Mukul’s well-documented book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, for example, would nudge the reader to see the Cobrapost’s media sting — available on its website — from a different perspective. A key question flows from the operation. Would the media barons not work for the BJP or, worse, work against it, if they were not offered huge sums? One is not excluding the mercenary angle in the projection of a political idea and there are good arguments to see Hindutva as a business investment too, but more of that another time.
Mukul’s book is about India’s business community of Marwaris — who happen to own much, possibly most of the so-called mainstream newspapers and TV channels — and the coming about of the Gita Press in Gorakhpur. The right-wing press was to become the fountainhead of reactionary Hindu political and communal discourse and also a platform for mobilisation 1926 onwards against India’s Dalits, assorted minorities, but chiefly targeting the Muslims. The book also prompts an unintended question as an aside. Why is it that nearly all the exposés involving Marwari business houses are carried out in the form of books?
The answer lies in another question. Who owns the press? Consider the fact that William Caxton’s induction of the printing press in England in the 15th century was put to use in subsequent eras by capitalists, communists and evangelists alike. It served the purposes of colonialism via Macaulay and it also fashioned a mode of anti-colonial upsurge. Muslim and Hindu communalists harnessed the technology to vend their own venomous messages.
Interestingly, the first challenge to the Marwari hold on news dissemination came from a leftist public-minded intellectual, one Debjyoti Burman, in 1950 in the form of a book. He wrote the Mystery of the Birla House as an exposé on the Calcutta-based business group. But the Birlas reportedly bought all three editions and eventually the copyrights of the book.
Mr Burman, however, presented his book to Purushottam Das Tandon, president of the Nasik session of Congress. In the foreword, he expressed the hope that Mr Tandon “will hear the tears falling and throw his weight on the side of the masses to save the country from ruthless exploitation”.
Burman told Tandon that “the health, wealth and happiness of our people are being butchered” by the business group. A copy of the disappeared vignette exists in the ‘rare textbooks’ section of the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi. Other books on Marwari business houses have been made to disappear mysteriously. In fact, in his quest for material on the Gita Press, Mukul found that copies of a rival journal that wrote detailed profiles of Indian communities were available for most groups but not the one that covered the Marwaris. He retrieved it anyhow with the help of a private archivist.
While the books that have either disappeared or failed to find vendors dealt mostly with financial exposés and the dark backstage of businesses, Mukul’s work deals with the Marwari pursuit of a religious and cultural platform to propagate their worldview, which invariably waded into politics, usually of a scurrilous kind.
“I wanted one of the issues of the journal Chand, which used to come out in the early 1920s — a particular issue on Marwaris, which was banned in that period,” Mukul has been quoted as saying in an interview. “Chand was taking on all castes. It brought out issues on Kayasths too so it was an equal opportunity offender. They did it to everyone; they were quite a gang. I was looking for this ‘Marwari Ank’ but all the libraries in Allahabad and Banaras had all the issues of Chand but not that one because it was banned at that time and the community had bought up all the issues and destroyed them. But one antiquarian in Banaras dug up this copy of ‘Marwari Ank’ for me! So there are people who helped a lot outside the archives.”
There was a time when Marwari-owned newspapers ran professional outfits with editors valued for their integrity. That seems to have been more of an enforced discipline to conform to the political climate of secularism firmly tethered to a mixed economy driven by socially driven five-year plans.
The Cobrapost’s revelations are important to palpably feel the extent of the rot in the Indian media. But any suggestion that the newspapers and TV channels owned by the Gita Press-minded businesses were driven by the profit motive alone is to stretch the point.
“The idea [behind the Marwari publication] was that Hinduism should speak in one voice just like Islam does,” says Mukul. “According to them, Hindus were in big trouble because they didn’t speak in one voice.”
A FRESH Cobrapost sting operation has shown a number of big media outfits accepting money to spread fake news and whip up religious hysteria to boost the BJP’s chances in the 2019 elections. The Cobrapost is held in high regard and its exposés in the past have helped the interests of Indian democracy. This one, however, has left one a bit confused. Did we need to bribe Goebbels to do what he was already good at doing and was likely to do anyway?
Another way of seeing the matter is through the ideological affinity and collusion that exists between most media houses and Hindutva, which makes them predisposed ideologically to align with the BJP. Congress has elements the coterie can support, mainly with regard to business leeway. Otherwise, Indira Gandhi’s nationalisation of the banks, which they owned, and her initial flirtation with the left in a Nehruvian romance won her the clique’s disapproval. Even Rajiv Gandhi went for their jugular when he exhorted Congress workers to shake the moneybags off their backs. The business clique’s preference for a non-Gandhi Congress leader makes eminent sense.
A straight reading of Akshaya Mukul’s well-documented book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, for example, would nudge the reader to see the Cobrapost’s media sting — available on its website — from a different perspective. A key question flows from the operation. Would the media barons not work for the BJP or, worse, work against it, if they were not offered huge sums? One is not excluding the mercenary angle in the projection of a political idea and there are good arguments to see Hindutva as a business investment too, but more of that another time.
Mukul’s book is about India’s business community of Marwaris — who happen to own much, possibly most of the so-called mainstream newspapers and TV channels — and the coming about of the Gita Press in Gorakhpur. The right-wing press was to become the fountainhead of reactionary Hindu political and communal discourse and also a platform for mobilisation 1926 onwards against India’s Dalits, assorted minorities, but chiefly targeting the Muslims. The book also prompts an unintended question as an aside. Why is it that nearly all the exposés involving Marwari business houses are carried out in the form of books?
The answer lies in another question. Who owns the press? Consider the fact that William Caxton’s induction of the printing press in England in the 15th century was put to use in subsequent eras by capitalists, communists and evangelists alike. It served the purposes of colonialism via Macaulay and it also fashioned a mode of anti-colonial upsurge. Muslim and Hindu communalists harnessed the technology to vend their own venomous messages.
Interestingly, the first challenge to the Marwari hold on news dissemination came from a leftist public-minded intellectual, one Debjyoti Burman, in 1950 in the form of a book. He wrote the Mystery of the Birla House as an exposé on the Calcutta-based business group. But the Birlas reportedly bought all three editions and eventually the copyrights of the book.
Mr Burman, however, presented his book to Purushottam Das Tandon, president of the Nasik session of Congress. In the foreword, he expressed the hope that Mr Tandon “will hear the tears falling and throw his weight on the side of the masses to save the country from ruthless exploitation”.
Burman told Tandon that “the health, wealth and happiness of our people are being butchered” by the business group. A copy of the disappeared vignette exists in the ‘rare textbooks’ section of the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi. Other books on Marwari business houses have been made to disappear mysteriously. In fact, in his quest for material on the Gita Press, Mukul found that copies of a rival journal that wrote detailed profiles of Indian communities were available for most groups but not the one that covered the Marwaris. He retrieved it anyhow with the help of a private archivist.
While the books that have either disappeared or failed to find vendors dealt mostly with financial exposés and the dark backstage of businesses, Mukul’s work deals with the Marwari pursuit of a religious and cultural platform to propagate their worldview, which invariably waded into politics, usually of a scurrilous kind.
“I wanted one of the issues of the journal Chand, which used to come out in the early 1920s — a particular issue on Marwaris, which was banned in that period,” Mukul has been quoted as saying in an interview. “Chand was taking on all castes. It brought out issues on Kayasths too so it was an equal opportunity offender. They did it to everyone; they were quite a gang. I was looking for this ‘Marwari Ank’ but all the libraries in Allahabad and Banaras had all the issues of Chand but not that one because it was banned at that time and the community had bought up all the issues and destroyed them. But one antiquarian in Banaras dug up this copy of ‘Marwari Ank’ for me! So there are people who helped a lot outside the archives.”
There was a time when Marwari-owned newspapers ran professional outfits with editors valued for their integrity. That seems to have been more of an enforced discipline to conform to the political climate of secularism firmly tethered to a mixed economy driven by socially driven five-year plans.
The Cobrapost’s revelations are important to palpably feel the extent of the rot in the Indian media. But any suggestion that the newspapers and TV channels owned by the Gita Press-minded businesses were driven by the profit motive alone is to stretch the point.
“The idea [behind the Marwari publication] was that Hinduism should speak in one voice just like Islam does,” says Mukul. “According to them, Hindus were in big trouble because they didn’t speak in one voice.”
Sunday 3 June 2018
I wrote a novel about my family. What could go wrong?
All writers are thieves but when it comes to stealing from your own flesh and blood — that way danger lies writes Francesca Jakobi in The Financial Times
In the wedding photograph my grandmother is not quite smiling. She is wearing white from top to toe — the only one to do so; the bride wore turquoise — and clutching a small glass of wine.
In the wedding photograph my grandmother is not quite smiling. She is wearing white from top to toe — the only one to do so; the bride wore turquoise — and clutching a small glass of wine.
The snapshot was taken on the day my parents married in 1964. Gerdi was the mother of the groom. It was a bright summer’s day and London was swinging, but my grandmother looks guarded and anxious.
It must have been hard for her, surrounded by her ex-husband’s relatives. She had had an affair during the second world war and lost custody of my father as a consequence. Their relationship never fully recovered, though it was plain to see that she adored him. She rang him most nights in the middle of supper, throughout my childhood. We’d chorus: “I wonder who that could be?”
I’ve always been fascinated by my German Jewish grandmother. She was someone I loved deeply but never quite understood. I’d grown up hearing one side of the story: that she was weak and selfish, and had paid a heavy price for it. I wanted to know what might have led to the decisions she made. How could a loving mother walk out on her son?
I used the black-and-white photograph as the basis of a story, imagining the wedding day from her point of view. The voice I wrote in was feisty and spiky, a million miles away from my shy, awkward grandmother. But it felt good to examine things from her perspective. It felt like I was giving her a hearing.
It was only months later, as it grew into a novel, that I started to worry I’d been reckless. What I’d written was fiction, yet the story behind it was real. I was scared that it might expose my family when my instinct is always to protect them. The dirty linen one mustn’t wash in public was strewn across 300 pages.
All writers are thieves. They steal material wherever they can find it: a grumpy exchange overheard on the bus, the spotty shoulders of a long-ago boyfriend. But stealing stories from your nearest and dearest — that way danger lies. The road is littered with feuds and disinheritances. If you loved your family, why would you risk it?
My shelves are packed with books by writers who have taken that gamble, from AA Milne to Andrea Levy, Hanif Kureishi and Isabel Allende. Some reimagined a relative’s life, others used their offspring as a springboard to a whole new world. There’s an emotional truth at the heart of these books that attracts me.
I have always wanted to write a novel. I had my first go when I was nine. It was four sheets of paper sewn together with crooked stitches. The title: When the Dead Cock Crowed. I don’t recall that much about the plot (it had something to do with time travel and poultry) but I remember the excitement of filling the pages with words, my vice-like grip on the felt-tip pen as I wrote in giant capitals “THE END”.
That was the feeling I sought to recapture aged 25, when I tried to write “chick-lit”. It was 1997 and Bridget Jones was all the rage. I’d just come back from teaching English in Turkey and was unsure what to do with my life. It seemed I’d found the answer as I tapped away on my Canon Starwriter. Research? Who needs it. Plot? Just keep writing. I was propelled by the arrogance of youth.
I hit 50,000 words before I ran out of steam. When I read the manuscript back, I was horrified by what I’d produced. First drafts are supposed to be rough, but this one was truly a stinker. I thank God that Turkish Delight never made it to the bookshops.
The experience taught me just how difficult it is to write a novel and that making characters and events sound plausible is harder still. If I was going to devote that time and effort again, it had to be for something I believed in.
I wanted an authentic tale, one that I felt qualified to tell. It took me until my late thirties to find what I was looking for.
Right from the start my novel Bitter was a murky mix of fact and fiction. The protagonist had my grandmother’s name and the same loveless childhood in Germany. She lived in the same smart Swiss Cottage flat I remembered from countless visits. Her favourite restaurant, Luigi’s off Finchley Road, was one I had been to with Gerdi.
But as I began to write, I realised I knew very little beyond the headline facts. My grandmother had been dead for almost a decade. In life, she rarely talked about the past and my father had been tucked away at boarding school.
At first it felt strange to be making things up — it reminded me of playing with Barbie dolls — but the more imaginative leaps I made, the more natural it became. I wrote instinctively, mixing anecdotes with half-truths. I changed the protagonist’s name to Gilda (it had to have the same feeling as Gerdi) and that one small change was like cutting a tether; she took on a life of her own.
Ambition is a peculiar thing: mine seemed to grow along with my word count. When I finally got to the end of the first draft, I thought I had something that could work. But along with that came my first serious doubts. I’d distorted the facts beyond recognition. My protagonist was an unlikeable woman with a life spinning out of control. Yet aspects of the story still belonged to my grandmother. I shuddered to think what she’d have made of it.
I wasn’t the only one struggling to distinguish the truth. Shortly after I’d shown her the first draft, my mother recounted an anecdote about Gerdi and I realised it had come from the book. I told her I had made the story up, but she insisted it had actually happened. Perhaps it did. Perhaps I’d heard it at some point. Neither of us has any way of knowing.
I returned to the manuscript and deleted several sections of it. I wrote the word “compassion” on a Post-it note and stuck it to my screen. The second draft was kinder, the characters more nuanced, the ending more hopeful. I added another layer of plot to push it further into fiction.
As I set about the long process of trying to find an agent, I wondered whether to mention the family link. In the end I did. I wanted to show why I was the right person to write this particular story. And also, if I’m honest, I hoped it might be a selling point.
When Lionel Shriver wrote her fifth novel, A Perfectly Good Family, she thought it might cause “a little aggro”. In fact, her brother refused to speak to her for two years. Writing more than a decade after the book’s publication, she warned: “Anyone considering writing fiction or a memoir that brushes even slightly against real-life family should take heed: think twice.”
This is good advice, clearly. Even the most sensitive writers can cause unintended harm. AA Milne’s son Christopher was badly bullied at boarding school for his role in Winnie-the-Pooh. Isabel Allende’s relatives didn’t speak to her for several years after recognising themselves in her debut House of the Spirits.
Some authors see such repercussions as part of the job description. Hanif Kureishi, whose 2003 film The Mother caused a serious rift with his sister, says his only regrets “are to do with quality”. Rachel Cusk, who was vilified for writing about motherhood and the breakdown of her marriage, has said “If you really care what people think of you . . . you’re never going to be a writer.”
Yet most of the authors I know agonise about the possibility of hurting loved ones. A friend scrapped an entire manuscript because she was worried what her children would one day make of it. Another changed a crucial death scene because it was too close to what had happened to a relative.
Andrea Levy shows that family stories need not be a source of conflict. Her novel Small Island came out of her father’s emigration to Britain from Jamaica on the Empire Windrush and her mother’s arrival six months later. The two main characters, Gilbert and Hortense, are named after her parents. In a piece for The Guardian, she said: “Small Island was a joy to write and those characters will stay with me forever. It became a work of fiction, but for me it still remains something of a family history too.”
I asked my parents’ permission to write about Gerdi early on and both were supportive. When I speak to my mother now, she says she wasn’t worried at all. As a retired psychoanalyst, she knows the importance of telling stories. She trusted that I was writing from a place of love. I wasn’t trying to settle any scores.
In fact, she rather wished that I was writing about her parents. She saw it as a way to somehow bring them back to life. I understand that. For a while it did feel like Gerdi was more present. I thought about her a great deal. We talked about her often at the dinner table.
My father, it seemed to me, was not hugely interested. His childhood years were unhappy and he had no wish to return to them. But, aged 80, he had just completed a Masters in creative writing and I thought he understood where I was coming from. I spoke to him a bit about his mum. Neither of us expected my novel would be published. I showed him some passages along the way but he didn’t want to read it until it was a “proper book”.
When I spoke to him for this article, he admits he’d had concerns about what I was doing. “I knew you didn’t know enough to write a decent memoir and I was worried you were going down the Hilary Mantel ‘faction’ route. I didn’t like the idea of you making things up to fill the gaps.”
Could I have written Bitter without my parents’ permission? Honestly, I don’t think so. It wasn’t just my grandmother’s archives I raided. The book is stuffed with family memories: my mother’s school dinners in the 1950s, my brother as a child learning chess with my dad, my nephew running as fast as he can through the autumn leaves, me hobbling across the stones to paddle in the sea at Brighton.
I was nervous when I finally handed Dad a hardback copy. At first he said he was enjoying it. But Mum told me later that he was finding it quite upsetting. She thought chapters that touched on his early life had reminded him of a time he would rather forget.
I rang him and he said it had captured something about his mother. It wasn’t Gerdi and yet somehow it was her — not the words, perhaps, but the underlying sadness. It was unsettling to see this period through the eyes of his daughter. I said he should stop reading it and he has.
He’s since explained that he could never quite see it as fiction. To him Gilda is an imposter, pretending to be his mum. When he heard the actress in the audio version had a German accent, his response was immediate. “No. That’s wrong. Mum lost most of her accent.”
I don’t doubt how proud he is, though. He took me out to lunch on publication day. As I got up to go to the ladies room, I saw him lean over to the strangers at the table next to us. Pointing in my direction, he said: “That’s my clever daughter.”
Both my parents came to the launch party and my father thoroughly enjoyed himself. One of my friends mentioned a scene from the book that revolved around a small boy and some coffee cups. Dad told her: “That was me, you know.”
Saturday 2 June 2018
Citizenship for sale: how tycoons can go shopping for a new passport
Jon Henley in The Guardian
It’s the must-have accessory for every self-respecting 21st-century oligarch, and a good many mere multimillionaires: a second – and sometimes a third or even a fourth – passport.
Israel, which helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich out of a spot of bother this week by granting him citizenship after delays in renewing his expired UK visa, offers free nationality to any Jewish person wishing to move there.
But there are as many as two dozen other countries, including several in the EU, where someone with the financial resources of the Chelsea football club owner could acquire a new nationality for a price: the global market in citizenship-by-investment programmes – or CIPs as they are commonly known – is booming.
The ‘golden visa’ deal: ‘We have in effect been selling off British citizenship to the rich’
The schemes’ specifics – and costs, ranging from as little as $100,000 (£74,900) to as much as €2.5m (£2.19m) – may vary, but not the principle: in essence, wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
Some do not offer citizenship for sale outright, but run schemes usually known as “golden visas” that reward investors with residence permits that can eventually lead – typically after a period of five years – to citizenship.
The programmes are not new, but are growing exponentially, driven by wealthy private investors from emerging market economies including China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the Middle East and more recently Turkey.
The first launched in 1984, a year after young, cash-strapped St Kitts and Nevis won independence from the UK. Slow to take off, it accelerated fast after 2009 when passport-holders from the Caribbean island nation were granted visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone.
For poorer countries, such schemes can be a boon, lifting them out of debt and even becoming their biggest export: the International Monetary Fund reckons St Kitts and Nevis earned 14% of its GDP from its CIP in 2014, and other estimates put the figure as high as 30% of state revenue.
Wealthier countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have also seen the potential of CIPs (the US EB-5 programme is worth about $4bn a year to the economy) but sell their schemes more around the attractions of a stable economy and safe investment environment than on freedom of movement.
Experts from the many companies, such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex, now specialising in CIPs and advertising their services online and in inflight magazines, say that unlike Abramovich, relatively few of their clients buy citizenship in order to move immediately to the country concerned.
For most, the acquisition represents an insurance policy: with nationalism, protectionism, isolationism and fears of financial instability on the rise around the world, the state of the industry serves as an effective barometer of global political and economic uncertainty.
But CIPs are not without their critics. Malta, for example, has come under sustained fire from Brussels and other EU capitals for its programme, run by Henley and Partners, which according to the IMF saw more than 800 wealthy individuals gain citizenship in the three years following its launch in 2014.
Critics said the scheme was undermining the concept of EU citizenship, posing potential major security risks, and providing a possible route for wealthy individuals – for example from Russia – with opaque income streams to dodge sanctions in their own countries.
Several other CIPs have come under investigation for fraud, while equality campaigners increasingly argue the moral case that it is simply wrong to grant automatic citizenship to ultra-high net worth individuals when the less privileged must wait their turn – and, in many cases, be rejected.
The Caribbean
The best-known – and cheapest – CIP schemes are in the Caribbean, where the warm climate, low investment requirements and undemanding residency obligations have long proved popular. Five countries currently offer CIPs, often giving visa-free travel to the EU, and have recently cut their prices to attract investors as they seek funds to help them rebuild after last year’s hurricanes. In St Kitts and Nevis a passport can now be had for a $150,000 donation to the hurricane relief fund, while Antigua, Barbuda and Granada have cut their fees to $100,000, the same level as St Lucia and Dominica.
Europe
Almost half of the EU’s member states offer some kind of investment residency or citizenship programme leading to a highly prized EU passport, which typically allows visa-free travel to between 150 and 170 countries. Malta’s citizenship-for-sale scheme requires a €675,000 donation to the national development fund and a €350,000 property purchase. In Cyprus the cost is a €2m investment in real estate, stocks, government bonds or Cypriot businesses (although the number of new passports is to be capped at 700 a year following criticism). In Bulgaria, €500,000 gets you residency, and about €1m over two years plus a year’s residency gets you fast-track citizenship. Investors can get residency rights leading longer term to citizenship – usually after five years, and subject to passing relevant language and other tests – for €65,000 in Latvia (equities), €250,000 in Greece (property), €350,000 or €500,000 (property or a small business investment fund) or €500,000 in Spain (property, and you have to wait 10 years to apply for citizenship).
Rest of the world
Thailand offers several “elite residency” packages costing $3,000-$4,000 a year for up to 20 years residency, some including health checkups, spa treatments and VIP handling from government agencies. The EB-5 US visa, particularly popular with Chinese investors, costs between €500,000 and $1m depending on the type of investment and gives green card residency that can eventually lead to a passport. Canada closed its CA$800,000 (£460,000) federal investment immigration programme in 2014 but now has a similar residency scheme, costing just over CA$1m, for “innovative start-ups”, as well as regional schemes in, for example, Quebec. Australia requires an investment of AU$1.5m (£850,000) and a net worth of AU$2.5m for residency that could, eventually, lead to citizenship, and New Zealand – popular with Silicon Valley types – an investment of up to NZ$10m (£5.2m).
It’s the must-have accessory for every self-respecting 21st-century oligarch, and a good many mere multimillionaires: a second – and sometimes a third or even a fourth – passport.
Israel, which helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich out of a spot of bother this week by granting him citizenship after delays in renewing his expired UK visa, offers free nationality to any Jewish person wishing to move there.
But there are as many as two dozen other countries, including several in the EU, where someone with the financial resources of the Chelsea football club owner could acquire a new nationality for a price: the global market in citizenship-by-investment programmes – or CIPs as they are commonly known – is booming.
The ‘golden visa’ deal: ‘We have in effect been selling off British citizenship to the rich’
The schemes’ specifics – and costs, ranging from as little as $100,000 (£74,900) to as much as €2.5m (£2.19m) – may vary, but not the principle: in essence, wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
Some do not offer citizenship for sale outright, but run schemes usually known as “golden visas” that reward investors with residence permits that can eventually lead – typically after a period of five years – to citizenship.
The programmes are not new, but are growing exponentially, driven by wealthy private investors from emerging market economies including China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the Middle East and more recently Turkey.
The first launched in 1984, a year after young, cash-strapped St Kitts and Nevis won independence from the UK. Slow to take off, it accelerated fast after 2009 when passport-holders from the Caribbean island nation were granted visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone.
For poorer countries, such schemes can be a boon, lifting them out of debt and even becoming their biggest export: the International Monetary Fund reckons St Kitts and Nevis earned 14% of its GDP from its CIP in 2014, and other estimates put the figure as high as 30% of state revenue.
Wealthier countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have also seen the potential of CIPs (the US EB-5 programme is worth about $4bn a year to the economy) but sell their schemes more around the attractions of a stable economy and safe investment environment than on freedom of movement.
Experts from the many companies, such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex, now specialising in CIPs and advertising their services online and in inflight magazines, say that unlike Abramovich, relatively few of their clients buy citizenship in order to move immediately to the country concerned.
For most, the acquisition represents an insurance policy: with nationalism, protectionism, isolationism and fears of financial instability on the rise around the world, the state of the industry serves as an effective barometer of global political and economic uncertainty.
But CIPs are not without their critics. Malta, for example, has come under sustained fire from Brussels and other EU capitals for its programme, run by Henley and Partners, which according to the IMF saw more than 800 wealthy individuals gain citizenship in the three years following its launch in 2014.
Critics said the scheme was undermining the concept of EU citizenship, posing potential major security risks, and providing a possible route for wealthy individuals – for example from Russia – with opaque income streams to dodge sanctions in their own countries.
Several other CIPs have come under investigation for fraud, while equality campaigners increasingly argue the moral case that it is simply wrong to grant automatic citizenship to ultra-high net worth individuals when the less privileged must wait their turn – and, in many cases, be rejected.
The Caribbean
The best-known – and cheapest – CIP schemes are in the Caribbean, where the warm climate, low investment requirements and undemanding residency obligations have long proved popular. Five countries currently offer CIPs, often giving visa-free travel to the EU, and have recently cut their prices to attract investors as they seek funds to help them rebuild after last year’s hurricanes. In St Kitts and Nevis a passport can now be had for a $150,000 donation to the hurricane relief fund, while Antigua, Barbuda and Granada have cut their fees to $100,000, the same level as St Lucia and Dominica.
Europe
Almost half of the EU’s member states offer some kind of investment residency or citizenship programme leading to a highly prized EU passport, which typically allows visa-free travel to between 150 and 170 countries. Malta’s citizenship-for-sale scheme requires a €675,000 donation to the national development fund and a €350,000 property purchase. In Cyprus the cost is a €2m investment in real estate, stocks, government bonds or Cypriot businesses (although the number of new passports is to be capped at 700 a year following criticism). In Bulgaria, €500,000 gets you residency, and about €1m over two years plus a year’s residency gets you fast-track citizenship. Investors can get residency rights leading longer term to citizenship – usually after five years, and subject to passing relevant language and other tests – for €65,000 in Latvia (equities), €250,000 in Greece (property), €350,000 or €500,000 (property or a small business investment fund) or €500,000 in Spain (property, and you have to wait 10 years to apply for citizenship).
Rest of the world
Thailand offers several “elite residency” packages costing $3,000-$4,000 a year for up to 20 years residency, some including health checkups, spa treatments and VIP handling from government agencies. The EB-5 US visa, particularly popular with Chinese investors, costs between €500,000 and $1m depending on the type of investment and gives green card residency that can eventually lead to a passport. Canada closed its CA$800,000 (£460,000) federal investment immigration programme in 2014 but now has a similar residency scheme, costing just over CA$1m, for “innovative start-ups”, as well as regional schemes in, for example, Quebec. Australia requires an investment of AU$1.5m (£850,000) and a net worth of AU$2.5m for residency that could, eventually, lead to citizenship, and New Zealand – popular with Silicon Valley types – an investment of up to NZ$10m (£5.2m).
Using Visualisation to improve your cricket
Tim Wigmore in Cricinfo
It was the night before the final day of West Indies' Test against Australia in Barbados in 1999. West Indies were in jeopardy: 85 for 3, in pursuit of 308 to win. Prospects of victory, it was obvious, hinged upon Brian Lara, who was 2 not out, after surviving a tetchy end to the fourth day.
When stumps were called, Lara had a chat with Rudi Webster, West Indies' mental-skills coach. In his book, Think Like A Champion, Webster recalls:
"My advice to him was to imagine the game as already won and to visualise and feel himself constructing that victory. I asked him to mentally rehearse seeing the ball the moment it leaves the bowler's hand and to feel his movements as he gets into position smoothly and quickly to stroke the ball into the gaps in the field. I also asked him to see and feel himself playing his natural game, facing one ball at a time, and enjoying the challenge."
The following day, Lara played one of the greatest innings of all time. In the euphoria after his 153 not out, Lara told Webster: "I was seeing the ball so clearly that I couldn't miss it. Everything worked out the way I imagined it."
Lara was an adherent of visualisation, as Rahul Bhattacharya detailed for the Cricket Monthly. An old school friend, Nicholas Gomez, had earlier given him a book on Michael Jordan, which included a section on how Jordan used visualisation. At 6am on the day of his 153 not out, Lara called Gomez. "We went about planning this innings against the best team in the world. And it was amazing to see how it just came to fruition."
Before they head onto the field for a game, most of the world's best cricketers have already, like Lara, been there in their heads. Some do this in the middle itself - either with their bat or just their hands; some just do it in front of a mirror at home or, as Lara did, through talking the innings over.
Such visualisation aims to prepare players by decoding the opposition and conditions before game day. "What you're trying to do in visualisation is build that depth of experience even though you're not physically doing it," explains Jeremy Snape, a former England cricketer who has worked as a sports psychologist in six editions of the IPL. "When your brain has that conditioning, it's more likely to respond in a favourable way under pressure. What athletes then do is try and first visualise it, then stimulate it, then practise it, then do it."
Visualisation can help players remain more grounded during matches, keeping their focus upon their normal processes rather than what is new. Snape explains: "We want to make sure that our decision-making is as calm and rational as it possibly can be, rather than being emotional and irrational, which is what happens under pressure."
It was the night before the final day of West Indies' Test against Australia in Barbados in 1999. West Indies were in jeopardy: 85 for 3, in pursuit of 308 to win. Prospects of victory, it was obvious, hinged upon Brian Lara, who was 2 not out, after surviving a tetchy end to the fourth day.
When stumps were called, Lara had a chat with Rudi Webster, West Indies' mental-skills coach. In his book, Think Like A Champion, Webster recalls:
"My advice to him was to imagine the game as already won and to visualise and feel himself constructing that victory. I asked him to mentally rehearse seeing the ball the moment it leaves the bowler's hand and to feel his movements as he gets into position smoothly and quickly to stroke the ball into the gaps in the field. I also asked him to see and feel himself playing his natural game, facing one ball at a time, and enjoying the challenge."
The following day, Lara played one of the greatest innings of all time. In the euphoria after his 153 not out, Lara told Webster: "I was seeing the ball so clearly that I couldn't miss it. Everything worked out the way I imagined it."
Lara was an adherent of visualisation, as Rahul Bhattacharya detailed for the Cricket Monthly. An old school friend, Nicholas Gomez, had earlier given him a book on Michael Jordan, which included a section on how Jordan used visualisation. At 6am on the day of his 153 not out, Lara called Gomez. "We went about planning this innings against the best team in the world. And it was amazing to see how it just came to fruition."
Before they head onto the field for a game, most of the world's best cricketers have already, like Lara, been there in their heads. Some do this in the middle itself - either with their bat or just their hands; some just do it in front of a mirror at home or, as Lara did, through talking the innings over.
Such visualisation aims to prepare players by decoding the opposition and conditions before game day. "What you're trying to do in visualisation is build that depth of experience even though you're not physically doing it," explains Jeremy Snape, a former England cricketer who has worked as a sports psychologist in six editions of the IPL. "When your brain has that conditioning, it's more likely to respond in a favourable way under pressure. What athletes then do is try and first visualise it, then stimulate it, then practise it, then do it."
Visualisation can help players remain more grounded during matches, keeping their focus upon their normal processes rather than what is new. Snape explains: "We want to make sure that our decision-making is as calm and rational as it possibly can be, rather than being emotional and irrational, which is what happens under pressure."
Matthew Hayden would habitually sit and meditate on the pitch a day before the match © Getty Images
The tool can be invaluable for players who don't expect to play. On South Africa's tour of Australia in 2008, JP Duminy was the reserve batsman and faced a tour carrying drinks. Snape, then a consulting psychologist for South Africa, observed that Duminy seemed "disgruntled, dragging around his bag at training". He set Duminy a challenge: "Why don't you prepare for this Test match as if you're the captain of South Africa in four years' time? We prepared as if he was going to take them on for real." Duminy was given various simulations, including imagining that he was facing Mitchell Johnson when Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowled his left-arm pace in the nets.
The day before the first Test, Ashwell Prince broke his thumb and was ruled out on the morning of the game. Duminy hit 50 not out in the second innings as South Africa chased down 414 in Perth. In the next Test he hit 166, an innings for the ages, as South Africa sealed their first Test series victory in Australia.
Pre-game visualisation aims not to inhibit instinctive play but to enable it. After each net session the day before a game, Matthew Hayden sat cross-legged by the stumps, grasping his bat in his hands and closing his eyes. He began the process as a child when he would train until he dropped, and then sit down to discuss the session with his older brother, who was his coach.
Of his method throughout his professional career, Hayden explained: "I continued the process of gathering my thoughts, sitting down in an environment which was comfortable and going through the kind of expectations I had in store for me in the week's period of the Test or the one-dayers, getting used to the conditions, understanding where the breeze is coming from, what the bowler's arms were going to look like, so that there were no surprises on the day, and just going through how I felt at that time."
After playing the innings in his head - not just picturing the bowlers he would face, but their angles of attack and how they would try to bowl to him - Hayden returned the next day to bat. "In the middle, I would let it all go and be completely relaxed, looking down at the wicket, loving the environment of being outside and being in a physical state of mind where I would be at peace."
Players even visualise how best to breathe between balls - which can help them maintain their equanimity and focus, and so keep their focus on the next delivery, rather than the opposition's attempts to frazzle them. For instance, when a bowler moves several fielders back, as preparation to bowl a bouncer, Snape says, earlier visualisation of breathing techniques can keep batsmen calm in the moment - and make them less susceptible to bowlers bowling a yorker as a bluff.
For batsmen, visualisation is a tool to demystify bowlers. On West Indies' tour of Australia in 1975-76 tour, Alvin Kallicharran was struggling against Jeff Thomson. Webster encouraged Kallicharran to practise against Thomson in slow motion, and then imagine that he was bowling at his normal speed. When he became comfortable with the idea of this, Kallicharran then visualised facing Thomson at twice his normal speed - and, in his mind, could still see the ball when it was released from the hand, gauge the line, angle and length and get into position to play his shots.
In his next innings, Kallicharran made a rapid 76. He then told Webster: "Everything happened the way we visualised them. I was alert but relaxed throughout my innings, and at no stage did I lose control. And I saw the big, bright red ball the moment it left the bowler's hand."
While visualisation is particularly favoured by batsmen, some bowlers have also used it to good effect. Wasim Akram's late wife, Huma, a psychologist and psychotherapist, introduced him to the concept.
© ESPNcricinfo Ltd
"When I started playing cricket as a professional, nobody told me how important the mind was in cricket," he said. During matches, Akram "used to visualise most of the deliveries that I bowled. For example, if there were reverse swing, I would bowl three awayswingers and then the inswinger. But before I bowled the inswinger I would visualise it and would see the ball swinging from outside the off stump into the batsman's pads or the stumps."
As with many other areas beyond the field of play, more cash and personnel are now being allocated to sports psychology.
"The understanding of neuroscience is the thing that's advanced in the last five-ten years," Snape observes. "Neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to grow connections and change through repetition and skill development - is really powerful." In Formula One, drivers can now visualise their lap times to within a few seconds, such is their depth of preparation.
Virtual-reality technology, which is already functional and rapidly developing, will take visualisation to a new level. Players will not just be able to visualise the bowlers but also the grounds, crowd and the noise in a stadium. It will then be possible for overseas batsmen to prepare for a tour of England, long before they have even left for the trip, by strapping on VR goggles and facing James Anderson and Stuart Broad at Lord's and Trent Bridge.
Not even Lara before Bridgetown was able to prepare for an innings with such thoroughness. But visualising like Lara is one thing; batting like him quite another.
The tool can be invaluable for players who don't expect to play. On South Africa's tour of Australia in 2008, JP Duminy was the reserve batsman and faced a tour carrying drinks. Snape, then a consulting psychologist for South Africa, observed that Duminy seemed "disgruntled, dragging around his bag at training". He set Duminy a challenge: "Why don't you prepare for this Test match as if you're the captain of South Africa in four years' time? We prepared as if he was going to take them on for real." Duminy was given various simulations, including imagining that he was facing Mitchell Johnson when Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowled his left-arm pace in the nets.
The day before the first Test, Ashwell Prince broke his thumb and was ruled out on the morning of the game. Duminy hit 50 not out in the second innings as South Africa chased down 414 in Perth. In the next Test he hit 166, an innings for the ages, as South Africa sealed their first Test series victory in Australia.
Pre-game visualisation aims not to inhibit instinctive play but to enable it. After each net session the day before a game, Matthew Hayden sat cross-legged by the stumps, grasping his bat in his hands and closing his eyes. He began the process as a child when he would train until he dropped, and then sit down to discuss the session with his older brother, who was his coach.
Of his method throughout his professional career, Hayden explained: "I continued the process of gathering my thoughts, sitting down in an environment which was comfortable and going through the kind of expectations I had in store for me in the week's period of the Test or the one-dayers, getting used to the conditions, understanding where the breeze is coming from, what the bowler's arms were going to look like, so that there were no surprises on the day, and just going through how I felt at that time."
After playing the innings in his head - not just picturing the bowlers he would face, but their angles of attack and how they would try to bowl to him - Hayden returned the next day to bat. "In the middle, I would let it all go and be completely relaxed, looking down at the wicket, loving the environment of being outside and being in a physical state of mind where I would be at peace."
Players even visualise how best to breathe between balls - which can help them maintain their equanimity and focus, and so keep their focus on the next delivery, rather than the opposition's attempts to frazzle them. For instance, when a bowler moves several fielders back, as preparation to bowl a bouncer, Snape says, earlier visualisation of breathing techniques can keep batsmen calm in the moment - and make them less susceptible to bowlers bowling a yorker as a bluff.
For batsmen, visualisation is a tool to demystify bowlers. On West Indies' tour of Australia in 1975-76 tour, Alvin Kallicharran was struggling against Jeff Thomson. Webster encouraged Kallicharran to practise against Thomson in slow motion, and then imagine that he was bowling at his normal speed. When he became comfortable with the idea of this, Kallicharran then visualised facing Thomson at twice his normal speed - and, in his mind, could still see the ball when it was released from the hand, gauge the line, angle and length and get into position to play his shots.
In his next innings, Kallicharran made a rapid 76. He then told Webster: "Everything happened the way we visualised them. I was alert but relaxed throughout my innings, and at no stage did I lose control. And I saw the big, bright red ball the moment it left the bowler's hand."
While visualisation is particularly favoured by batsmen, some bowlers have also used it to good effect. Wasim Akram's late wife, Huma, a psychologist and psychotherapist, introduced him to the concept.
© ESPNcricinfo Ltd"When I started playing cricket as a professional, nobody told me how important the mind was in cricket," he said. During matches, Akram "used to visualise most of the deliveries that I bowled. For example, if there were reverse swing, I would bowl three awayswingers and then the inswinger. But before I bowled the inswinger I would visualise it and would see the ball swinging from outside the off stump into the batsman's pads or the stumps."
As with many other areas beyond the field of play, more cash and personnel are now being allocated to sports psychology.
"The understanding of neuroscience is the thing that's advanced in the last five-ten years," Snape observes. "Neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to grow connections and change through repetition and skill development - is really powerful." In Formula One, drivers can now visualise their lap times to within a few seconds, such is their depth of preparation.
Virtual-reality technology, which is already functional and rapidly developing, will take visualisation to a new level. Players will not just be able to visualise the bowlers but also the grounds, crowd and the noise in a stadium. It will then be possible for overseas batsmen to prepare for a tour of England, long before they have even left for the trip, by strapping on VR goggles and facing James Anderson and Stuart Broad at Lord's and Trent Bridge.
Not even Lara before Bridgetown was able to prepare for an innings with such thoroughness. But visualising like Lara is one thing; batting like him quite another.
Friday 1 June 2018
Londongrad oligarchs are being forced back to Russia’s embrace
Max Seddon in The Financial Times
As the west’s relations with Moscow plumb ever lower depths, the UK is abuzz with calls to do something about its oligarch problem. “We are going after the money,” Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, vowed after former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned.
A group of MPs recently singled out law firm Linklaters for its work on the London float of En+, owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and called for a crackdown on “corrupt” Kremlin-connected tycoons.
But the ones in real trouble may be the oligarchs themselves. They were once ideal go-betweens between Russia and the west. The real life models for the mafia money launderer in espionage novelist John le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor saw no contradiction in sending their children to Eton. UK politicians had no qualms about staying on their yachts or serving in their boardrooms.
Now, feeling equally at home in London’s Soho and Moscow’s Soho Rooms — the nightclub so exclusive that, according to legend, Roman Abramovich once did not pass “face control” — is a liability. Mr Abramovich, who epitomised “Londongrad” bling when he bought Chelsea football club and a house on a street known as “ Billionaire’s Row”, struggled to get a UK visa. Suddenly, oligarchs are too Russian for a west eager to clean up its act and too western for a Russia hunting for “enemies of the people”. Or, as the Russian saying goes: if you sit on two chairs, something vulgar will happen to you through the crack in the middle.
“Even if you’re not sanctioned yourself, it still affects you,” a close friend of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs told me this week. “You go to a bank and the compliance department doesn’t want anything to do with anything Russian.”
Today, oligarchs are like hipsters with even worse dress sense: nobody will admit to being one, even if you know them when you see them.
Part of the problem is the nature of oligarchy, which has changed dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power 18 years ago. The classical definition is someone who acquired vast wealth, often through dubious political connections, by privatising state assets on the cheap, thus giving them huge power over the penniless political class.
In the 1990s, it was widely held that the real power in Russia lay not with Boris Yeltsin, but the oligarchs backing him. The late Boris Berezovsky liked to give the impression he ran the country during Yeltsin’s frequent absences due to heart problems and that he had handpicked Mr Putin as the next leader.
Mr Putin shifted the power dynamic in his first few years in office. Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who challenged him through their TV channels, were forced to flee. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who dared to take him on politically, was jailed for a decade.
That turned most of the other oligarchs into supplicants working under an unwritten rule: they were allowed to keep their wealth in exchange for staying out of politics.
The new set of prime movers were figures from Mr Putin’s childhood. They amassed huge fortunes after he became president — often through winning lucrative contracts from state companies such as Gazprom. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the US sanctioned these individuals first in the hope they would convince Mr Putin to change course.
Instead, they circled the wagons around him. Yuri Kovalchuk, a billionaire banker who once owned a dacha outside St Petersburg next to Mr Putin’s, made a bizarre TV appearance in which he said that Russia had a “nationally oriented elite” that knew “what side of the barricades it was on”.
He went on: “I’m not against having a flat abroad or a villa on the Cote d’Azur, be my guest. But the question is: where’s your home?”
The more recent US sanctions have cast a wider net that has perplexed its potential targets. “Before, they were going after people who really made money with the regime. Now we don’t get what it is for. If you think we can go to Putin and tell him what to do, you don’t understand Russia,” one oligarch told me this week. If anything, he continued, the western attack on oligarchs benefits the Kremlin. First, moves against Russian capital push them to repatriate cash stashed abroad in western companies — a goal Putin has struggled to achieve for years. Second, many in the elite increasingly see little reason to leave key businesses in private hands, especially if they require state support.
And now that several sanctioned oligarchs cannot pay off dollar loans to the state banks to whom they pledged major assets as collateral, they may not be tycoons for much longer.
“Putin loves this,” the oligarch said. “The regime is winning. The people like it because nobody likes oligarchs, and the state consolidates.”
The pressure the tycoons face at home and abroad has put the entire UK oligarch service industry at risk. I recently had dinner with my first Russian teacher, who now runs a consultancy helping oligarchs and assorted pretenders get their children into exclusive schools. When I mentioned that I had heard one businessman with a prominent UK presence was facing trouble after the state nationalised a company he part-owned, the teacher nearly spat out his food. “You’re joking!” he said. “He’s one of my best clients!”
As the west’s relations with Moscow plumb ever lower depths, the UK is abuzz with calls to do something about its oligarch problem. “We are going after the money,” Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, vowed after former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned.
A group of MPs recently singled out law firm Linklaters for its work on the London float of En+, owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and called for a crackdown on “corrupt” Kremlin-connected tycoons.
But the ones in real trouble may be the oligarchs themselves. They were once ideal go-betweens between Russia and the west. The real life models for the mafia money launderer in espionage novelist John le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor saw no contradiction in sending their children to Eton. UK politicians had no qualms about staying on their yachts or serving in their boardrooms.
Now, feeling equally at home in London’s Soho and Moscow’s Soho Rooms — the nightclub so exclusive that, according to legend, Roman Abramovich once did not pass “face control” — is a liability. Mr Abramovich, who epitomised “Londongrad” bling when he bought Chelsea football club and a house on a street known as “ Billionaire’s Row”, struggled to get a UK visa. Suddenly, oligarchs are too Russian for a west eager to clean up its act and too western for a Russia hunting for “enemies of the people”. Or, as the Russian saying goes: if you sit on two chairs, something vulgar will happen to you through the crack in the middle.
“Even if you’re not sanctioned yourself, it still affects you,” a close friend of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs told me this week. “You go to a bank and the compliance department doesn’t want anything to do with anything Russian.”
Today, oligarchs are like hipsters with even worse dress sense: nobody will admit to being one, even if you know them when you see them.
Part of the problem is the nature of oligarchy, which has changed dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power 18 years ago. The classical definition is someone who acquired vast wealth, often through dubious political connections, by privatising state assets on the cheap, thus giving them huge power over the penniless political class.
In the 1990s, it was widely held that the real power in Russia lay not with Boris Yeltsin, but the oligarchs backing him. The late Boris Berezovsky liked to give the impression he ran the country during Yeltsin’s frequent absences due to heart problems and that he had handpicked Mr Putin as the next leader.
Mr Putin shifted the power dynamic in his first few years in office. Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who challenged him through their TV channels, were forced to flee. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who dared to take him on politically, was jailed for a decade.
That turned most of the other oligarchs into supplicants working under an unwritten rule: they were allowed to keep their wealth in exchange for staying out of politics.
The new set of prime movers were figures from Mr Putin’s childhood. They amassed huge fortunes after he became president — often through winning lucrative contracts from state companies such as Gazprom. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the US sanctioned these individuals first in the hope they would convince Mr Putin to change course.
Instead, they circled the wagons around him. Yuri Kovalchuk, a billionaire banker who once owned a dacha outside St Petersburg next to Mr Putin’s, made a bizarre TV appearance in which he said that Russia had a “nationally oriented elite” that knew “what side of the barricades it was on”.
He went on: “I’m not against having a flat abroad or a villa on the Cote d’Azur, be my guest. But the question is: where’s your home?”
The more recent US sanctions have cast a wider net that has perplexed its potential targets. “Before, they were going after people who really made money with the regime. Now we don’t get what it is for. If you think we can go to Putin and tell him what to do, you don’t understand Russia,” one oligarch told me this week. If anything, he continued, the western attack on oligarchs benefits the Kremlin. First, moves against Russian capital push them to repatriate cash stashed abroad in western companies — a goal Putin has struggled to achieve for years. Second, many in the elite increasingly see little reason to leave key businesses in private hands, especially if they require state support.
And now that several sanctioned oligarchs cannot pay off dollar loans to the state banks to whom they pledged major assets as collateral, they may not be tycoons for much longer.
“Putin loves this,” the oligarch said. “The regime is winning. The people like it because nobody likes oligarchs, and the state consolidates.”
The pressure the tycoons face at home and abroad has put the entire UK oligarch service industry at risk. I recently had dinner with my first Russian teacher, who now runs a consultancy helping oligarchs and assorted pretenders get their children into exclusive schools. When I mentioned that I had heard one businessman with a prominent UK presence was facing trouble after the state nationalised a company he part-owned, the teacher nearly spat out his food. “You’re joking!” he said. “He’s one of my best clients!”
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