By Colin Wiles, housing consultant

Three days after the Russians invaded Ukraine, I visited Sotheby’s and Christie’s for the preview of their Modern and Contemporary art auctions.

It’s a rare chance to see some amazing works of art before they disappear forever. The two sales achieved almost half a billion pounds (Sotheby’s £230m and Christies £249m). I’ve no idea whether any of these works were sold by Russians looking to convert their assets into cash or bought by Russians aiming to turn their cash into physical assets (the names of buyers and sellers are rarely revealed) but I do know that wealthy Russians have been major players in the London art market for the past two decades. For example, in 2008 Roman Abramovich spent £100m on paintings by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. The obscene prices on the London art market have been inflated by Russian plutocrats.

For several decades now London has been the preferred home for Russian money, much of it from dubious sources, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the property market. It’s estimated that Russians own about £8bn worth of property, businesses and other assets in the UK, according to high end estate agents Aston Chase, and £1.1bn of that’s been invested in London property.

I’d imagine that’s a low estimate given there are 150,000 Russians living in London. The total value of UK property is around £9.2 trillion and over a fifth of that (£1.9tn) is in London – so, although £1.1bn isn’t a large proportion it’s undoubtedly driven inflation at the top end of the market, which then trickles down. (According to Savills London’s housing stock equates to more than twice the total value of homes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.)

The ease of forming new companies, compliant politicians and a network of helpful lawyers and finance houses all make life easier for Russian oligarchs in the UK.

The Treasury’s own analysis of Russian money laundering found “[…]a significant volume of Russian, or Russian-linked illicit finance channelled through the UK economy, through various regulated and unregulated sectors, including company formation and related professional services, as well as property. The UK’s company formation mechanisms provide the necessary corporate vehicles for transferring funds through the international financial system and this is a vulnerability regularly exploited to move Russian-linked illicit finance into the UK […] In the UK this money is often invested in high end UK real estate, private school fees, luxury vehicles […]”

According to the National Crime Agency, “many hundreds of billions of pounds of international criminal money is laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year”. That’s why the capital is dubbed the London Laundromat.

One analysis found that more than 600 apparently British companies set up in the last year were actually being controlled from Russia. Another found that in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea alone, at least 6,000 properties are registered in the name of anonymously owned companies, and many of them are thought to be Russian. If you walk around some of these areas at night, they resemble a ghost town. These properties are mere safety deposit boxes. As safe as houses, as the saying goes.

Imagine the impact that this has on housing needs in our capital city.

With Russia fast becoming a new North Korea there are growing calls for the seizure of Russian assets in the UK, yet the government hasn’t acted as quickly or as robustly as it could have done. Labour estimates that since Johnson became prime minister £1.9m has been given to the Conservative Party, or individual MPs’ constituency associations, by donors who have either “made money from Russia or have alleged links to the Putin regime”.  Evgeny Lebedev was even made a peer, despite security concerns about his background.

So, you can understand why some strands of the government are reluctant to act against Russian interests, even though most oligarchs have close links with Putin’s government.

When David Gilmour sold his Little Venice house in 2003, he gave the proceeds to homeless charity Crisis. A friend of mine was a trustee and says that when Gilmour came in for a meeting with trustees, he didn’t say how much the property was worth. Afterwards he was standing on the street waiting for a lift when he was approached by a homeless person. Gilmour gave him a £50 note. “That’s incredibly generous of you,” said a trustee. “That’s nothing” said Gilmour, “I’ve just given you a £3.6 million house.”

That house would now be worth a lot more.

Given that Vladimir Putin is in the process of devastating a sovereign country, hitting our food and fuel supplies, and threatening a nuclear war, would it be too much to ask the UK government to requisition a few dozen mansions owned by dodgy Putin-supporting plutocrats?

The proceeds, Dave Gilmour-style, could be donated to homeless charities. Just 20 properties at £10m each would make £200m. What a difference that would make on the streets of London!