Londongrad is a jaw dropping read. If it was wrapped up into a James Bond film you would pass it off as unbelievable fiction just a bit of fun. But this is not fiction, this is the real thing and it certainly is not fun; Russian gangster capitalism spilling out onto the streets of London, complete with lethal poisonings, exploding helicopters and shadowy KGB/FSB units tracking down oligarchs that refuse to play ball with the Russian government. When they are not betraying or killing each other in deadly feuds, they are buying exclusive London real estate just as fast as it comes onto the market.

The most prized piece of real estate to date of course has been Abromovich’s outrageously spectacular purchase of Chelsea Football Club, a trophy purchase that has lifted Chelsea into the footballing stratosphere with two back to back Premiership titles and five Champions League semi final places. In fact, without Abromovich’s millions, Chelsea may well have mirrored the same financial fate as Leeds United and fallen out of the top flight altogether. As it is, Abromovich has financed the club with an interest free loan that has seen them just one penalty kick away from being crowned European Champions. With their Russian money Chelsea are in permanent contention for domestic and European silverware.

The big question for British sport and for that matter British society generally; are the Russian Oligarchs fit and proper people to be taking ownership of our community football clubs? To put it more bluntly, is their money clean or dirty? Of course, this is a question that goes well beyond the Russian Oligarchs and should apply to all recent takeovers of British Football clubs whether foreign in origin or British based. I do not see how our two fun loving East London businessmen who have just bought West Ham United with the money they made peddling pornography, is somehow superior or cleaner to that of our seedy Russian billionaires, but more of that later. For now the focus is on Abromovich and his fellow Oligarchs. In the interests of personal safety and security from legal prosecution I will forthwith refer not to individuals but simply to the term Oligarch, a classical Greek term that indicated a tiny unelected elite who took control of ancient Greek society.

For a blow by blow account of each of our modern Russian Oligarchs and their respective rise to power, Londongrad is a must read. It’s fast and furious and pulls no punches. And most importantly, it traces the meteoric rise of the Oligarchs right back to ground zero the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US inspired and orchestrated instant privatisation of their once nationalised industries. As a taster, I have selected a few juicy passages, any one of which could readily become the subject title for a PhD thesis – for any student that is brave enough to do the research. In the words of The Baltimore Homicide Department AKA, ‘The Wire’, ‘just follow the money’.Why did the Oligarchs target London as their preferred base as opposed to warmer climes? The answer is simple. The Oligarchs were lured to London’s accommodating tax laws, compliant banking system, relaxed lifestyle, unobtrusive City regulation, elite schools and independent judicial system. P15 Or in the words of the then chancellor, a one Mr Gordon Brown, ‘light touch regulation’. More specifically, for Abromovich, London has helped to satisfy his apparent insatiable appetite for conspicuous consumption.’ P16

Hollingsworth and Lansley get right to the nub of things in their opening chapter. London has displaced New York as the financial capital of the world. It did so by providing an unrivalled tax avoidance industry and a much lighter regulatory touch.’ P17 Quoting a William Cash (sic), publisher of Spear’s Wealth Management Survey, we learn, ‘The British have found a new vocation. That is being the financial bag-carriers of the world. Britain’s ruling classes used to own the wealth. Now they’ve become the fee earning servant, servicing the global elite. P17 Of course, that was written prior to the global collapse of the banking system. Post banking collapse, just what role Britain will play in the new world order is anyone’s guess. Our fearless editors conclude, ‘The UK boasts an unrivalled tax-avoidance industry and an abundance of highly paid accountants able to devise complex ways of hiding an individual’s wealth. In 2007 the IMF ranked London alongside Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands as an offshore financial centre.’P18

A damning an indictment of our beloved capital city as is possible. Concluding their opening chapter, H&L state, Britain asks few questions about the provenance of new Russian wealth. Hence the hitmen who keep on arriving on our shores to settle accounts by violent means.’ P28 Unfortunately what H&L do not add is that all capitalism goes through a gangster phase with those still standing powerful enough to don the smart city suits and buy their way into polite well connected society. In his respect, established British and US capitalists are no different to our new wealthy Russian friends. The British government asks few questions but it should. Of course, British authorities really know the answers so they prefer not to ask the questions. In chapter 2 H&L help provide us with those answers: ..from the early 1990’s Russia was quickly transformed from a highly centralised economy to one in which some thirty or so individuals owned and controlled the commanding heights: its vast natural resources and manufacturing. P31

H&L continue, ‘Like their ancient Greek counterparts, few of the modern Russian oligarchs became mega-rich by creating new wealth but rather by insider political intrigue and by exploiting the weakness of the rule of law. Driven by a lust for money and power, they secured much of the country’s natural and historic wealth through the post Soviet era process of privatisation.’ P32 Many Chelsea fans may be vaguely aware that their benefactor is not squeaky-clean but they may be shocked to learn just how despicable his methods were. In short, the oligarchs preyed on the hunger and misery of their fellow citizens in order to amass their initial loot. Once they had fleeced their fellow Russians they were able to bribe, corrupt and bully their way to ever greater riches. H&L provide the details.

The first wave of privatization came in the form of a mass voucher scheme. All Russians were to be offered vouchers to the value of 10,000 roubles ($30 or one months average wage) These could over time be exchanged for shares either in companies that employed them or other state enterprises that were being privatized. It all sounded rather democratic and fair. Yeltsin promised it would produce millions of owners rather than a handful of millionaires.’ P33 How did events turn into their opposite? H&L explain. ‘Russian citizens were poor, often underpaid and many had lost their savings as inflation soared and the rouble collapsed. Moreover, after 70 years of communism, most Russians had no concept of the idea of share ownership. There wasn’t even a Russian word for privatization. There were however plenty of people who understood only too well what privatization meant and the value of the vouchers. They started buying them up in blocks from the workers. Stalls began to appear outside farms and factories offering to buy them from workers. Hustlers started going from door to door.’ P33

Capitalism had arrived in Russia and the hustling has never stopped since. H&L continue, Russia had become a giant unregulated stock exchange as purchasers (workers) were persuaded to trade their vouchers for prices that were nearly always well below their true value. They would exchange them for a bottle of vodka, a handful of US dollars or a few more roubles than they had paid for them. It proved a mass bonanza for those prepared to prey on a country suffering from mass deprivation.’ P34 The rest is obvious. Having amassed enough shares the oligarchs were able to gain control of formerly state controlled companies for a fraction of their real value. The first historic, if flawed, attempt by workers to collectively own and control their country’s wealth had well and truly come to an end. A new generation of capitalists were back in control and the working class could go to hell. The next chapter in the oligarchs rise to the top was equally dodgy. Russia was in an economic meltdown and the weak Yeltsin government was running out of money to pay pensions and government salaries. The oligarchs came up with a cunning plan. They would loan the government money in return for even more shares in the remaining state enterprises on the understanding that if the loans were not repaid they would keep the shares.

Surprise, surprise, the government defaulted on the loans and the oligarchs gained still further control of the once nationalised soviet industries. They got the lot: oil, gas, steel, aluminium and manufacturing. Abromovich’s own rise to prominence was a combination of street cunning and good contacts. Like most working class Soviet citizens, Abromovich’s first taste of adult life was in the Russian army. After the army, came a short period of study (highway engineering) and being bored with this honest pursuit, he thought he’d try his hand at, smuggling and the black marketeering; transporting luxury consumer goods like Marlboro cigarettes, Chanel perfume, and Levi and Wrangler jeans from Moscow back to Ukhta. P42 He then graduated from illegal fags to plastic toys and retreaded tyres.’ P42 With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Abromovich saw his chance.

In post-communist Russia it was possible to make enormous profits by buying oil at controlled domestic prices and selling it on in the unregulated international market. All that was needed was an export licence, which Abromovich acquired through his connection with a customs official.’P43 The next step in Abromovich’s meteoric rise was establishing his partnership with one of Russia’s most powerful and successful oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky, whose oil and gas conglomerate known as Sibneft would eventually help elevate Abromovich to the Premier League, both literally and metaphorically. It was his friendship with Boris Berezovsky that transformed Abromovich from hustler and mid-level oil trader into a billionaire.P43 The big break came when Berezovsky, who was embroiled in endless feuds with the Russian Government, allowed paper ownership of Sibneft to fall into the hands of Abromovich for safe keeping. Big mistake! No records were ever kept of the back room meetings between Berezovsky and Abromovich so when the two oligarchs fell out it was one mans word against the other. Abromovich apparently came out on top because he had been clever enough not to fall out with the Kremlin. In fact, to this day,
Abromovich owes his survival to his ability to not fall out with Putin and his administration. He gives a little and takes a lot. Some of his fellow oligarchs wanted to take everything and give nothing. They are either languishing in a Russian jail or holed up in one of their many mansions fearing that every new day could be their last. The reach of the KGB is long and unforgiving.Since Putin’s consolidation of power, there has been something of a roll-back of the worst excesses of Russian gangster capitalism. The oligarchs are being forced to pay some corporation tax and plough some of their ill-gotten gains back into the Russian economy. Abromovich seems to know the rules. As for Britain and the US, they come out of the whole saga as willing accomplices or, if you’re into conspiracy theories, the behind the scenes puppet masters. Every so often the West will squeal about Russian abuse of human rights but that should not be taken too seriously at all. H&L explain;

The indignant reaction in the West had less to do with a sudden concern for international human rights and more to do with the perceived new threat to Western interests. The West had turned a blind eye to the mass sell offs of the 1990’s because they were seen as the route to cheap oil and gas and opened up the door to foreign investment. British and American banks, PR companies, accountancy firms, and investment fund managers marched into Russia like an invading army intent on grabbing some of the spoils for themselves. In London the City investment banks and fund managers could hardly believe their luck as much of Russia’s secreted wealth flooded into Britain.’ P243 H&L continue their incisive indictment of Western motives; The hypocrisy of American pretence to help Russia create an honest and fair market economy was laid bare late in 2003, when Putin’s government finally began to roll back the crooked privatisations by moving against the largest tax evaders and embezzlers. The US response was a series of hand-ringing complaints that private enterprise was being threatened by a renewed statism.’ P244
So where are we now? More and more British football clubs are being snapped up by dubious capitalist investors and in the process sometimes saddling these clubs with ever greater levels of debt on top of those debts already incurred by their own extravagant wages bills. Manchester

United and Liverpool are the two most glaring examples. Chelsea are in a better place in that Abromovich has wiped out their debt and provided an interest free loan, but what if something unpleasant should befall him, or that he should get bored and find another hobby with which to amuse himself? Chelsea might just find themselves playing Leeds United again but this time in Division One of the Football League. It can happen. As for the surviving oligarchs, they have now graduated from Russian gangster capitalism to that of international casino capitalism. Our football clubs have been irrevocably drawn into that game and their long term fate is as assured as the rest of the global financial institutions. In other words, our clubs are as secure as our banks: teetering on the brink. Rumblings of discontent from the terraces are now audible and the front line of the battle is, unsurprisingly, at Old Trafford. A growing number of supporters want the Glaziers bought out, though what sort of financial arrangement would replace them is not certain. It will only be a real step forward if the supporters themselves take a controlling interest in the club. And where football leads could British society follow? A people’s bank? Interesting times ahead.