Sussex Politics students visit London corruption sites on ‘Klepto Tour’

At the end of April, a group of Sussex Politics undergraduate and Masters in Corruption and Governance students toured the homes of international kleptocrats and oligarchs to explore London as a haven for laundered money and the ill-gotten gains of corruption.

Modelled on the Beverly Hills bus tours of the homes of the rich and famous, the tour was organised by Politics Department and the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption. It included a range of guest speakers, including the excellent MA students taking the Masters in Corruption and Governance course. The educational trip, inspired by the Kleptocracy Tours run by ClampK, was organised by department and corruption studies centre for final year undergraduates taking the ‘Political Corruption’ module in lieu of their final class.

Following an introduction to kleptocracy and the so-called ‘London Laundromat’, the tour began at the historic and impressive London Guildhall, where the participants were treated to a stimulating presentation on the role of London firms in facilitating flows of corrupt capital. The group then took a look at the Houses of Parliament from across the Thames and discussed how foreign money can infiltrate political institutions and unduly influence British politics.

The group then went on to the leafy streets of Belgravia and Knightsbridge, where the squares of townhouses with elegant stucco façades provide an impressive cover of respectability for the investment of billions of laundered wealth. The tour took in several of London’s most notorious properties, including two houses nestled amongst the Embassies in Belgrave Square and One Hyde Park. This area, as well as housing some of the most expensive property on earth, including a flat owned by Kylie Minogue and the showrooms of the luxury brands Rolex and McLaren, is a popular hang-out for former politicians and billionaire businesspeople.

The tour concluded with a stop outside Brompton Road underground station, which was sold in 2013 to a pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarch, who was also a former donor to the Conservative Party, a known security risk at the time, and incredibly only paid £20 million of the £53 million price-tag upfront.

A highlight of the trip was a talk by Professor Liz Dávid-Barrett drawing upon her cutting edge research on state capture, a process by which powerful elites work on state institutions to entrench their power and privilege. In the process they steal public resources, leaving their states impoverished and undermining economic, social, and political stability. However, once looted, these public resources are laundered and placed in locations where they re-enter the legitimate market. This is where the City of London and the London property market come into their own as destinations for these financial flows, with an entire network of enablers employed to service these kleptocrats’ legal and financial needs.

The group also learnt that the cycle of corruption does not end there. While the theft of these resources causes the initial harm, the impact of where and how they are then invested can be devastating too – from contributing to the inflation of UK housing putting beyond the reach of ordinary people, to financing political parties and funding lobbying activity to unduly influence UK policymaking. The students came away from the tour with an increased awareness of the connected, networked, and trans-national nature of corruption and its impacts, and a greater appreciation of the part that the UK and London play in the much larger global picture, as both a facilitator and a victim of corruption and state capture.

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