Lawyers, bankers and city PR firms are ‘collaborators’ of Putin’s butchery, top Cabinet minister warns
LAWYERS, bankers and slick city PR firms are “white collar collaborators” for Putin’s butchery, a top Cabinet minister has warned.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid let rip at Monday’s cabinet meeting, urging Boris Johnson to do more to tackle professional firms that help rich oligarchs dominate London.
Ministers are looking at how to rein in big law and PR firms who spin for billionaires such as Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.
Yesterday MPs tore into the Home Secretary Priti Patel for “going slow” on sanctions, suggesting the government is getting bogged down in legal rows with potential targets.
Tory MP Bob Seeley used parliamentary privilege to name and shame top London law firms Harbottle and Lewis, Carter Ruck and CMS for working with oligarchs who have supported and propped up the Kremlin regime.
Using parliamentary privilege he singled out lawyers John Kelly at Harbottle and Lewis, Geraldine Proudler at CMS, Nigel Tait at Carter-Ruck who have worked on cases with oligarchs who back Putin's regime.
He branded them “Putin’s henchmen.. teaming up with amoral lawyers"; who “target and intimidate individuals“ and “intimidate a free press.”
He added: “It’s not only the oligarchs, it is their millionaire servant class of enablers who enable the billionaire class of oligarchs, who enable this Neo fascism that we now see in Europe.”
Naming solicitors at the law firms he added: “You've got to wonder about the reputations that these people are going to end up with in a few years time.”
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“A free press should be intimidating kleptocrats and criminals.
"Why have we got to the position in our society, a free society the mother of Parliament's, where we have kleptocrats, and criminals and oligarchs, intimidating a free media?”
Speaking in Estonia last night, Mr Johnson warned: “Those oligarchs who have connections with the Putin regime and who are benefitting from their association with the Russian state, we are going to expose and distrain their assets.”
The PM is proposing new powers to confiscate the unexplained wealth of Russian oligarchs.
And after a mealy mouthed statement from Chelsea owner Mr. Abramovich, Mr Johnson urged Putin’s pals to speak out about the violence in Ukraine.
“I think that their silence is inexplicable, and I think that people need to step up and denounce this act of aggression,” he said.
The Russian billionaire announced on Saturday he has handed over the stewardship of the West London outfit to their six trustees.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it has been claimed that bids to sell the club THIS WEEK are being prepared to reach Abramovich.