Published: July 2023
Authors: John Heathershaw, Tom Mayne
Unexplained Wealth Orders, introduced in the United Kingdom in 2017, were designed to tackle the problem of transnational kleptocracy. However, our research on real estate purchases in the UK by elites from post-Soviet kleptocracies dem-onstrates that incumbent elites are invulnerable to attempts to question the legality of their wealth while exiles from these states often lose their property. The researchers elaborate an exemplary case of transnational kleptocracy (Kazakhstan’s Dariga Nazarbayeva and Nurali Aliyev) revealing how British legal services actively, passively, and structurally enable specific acts of money laundering. They further expose how they effectively explain kleptocratic wealth and why they are likely to continue to do so despite recent changes to laws and regulations.
