Why isn’t the EU more aggressive on Russia? And where are the cryptocurrency oligarchs?
Hi, welcome to Oligarchy, where we are tracking how the super rich are changing the world for the rest of us.
LIVE AND KICKING
Last week, we held our first ever virtual Oligarchy Live event, which went very well. If you were unable to attend the Zoom call, it’s available to watch online here, and I would highly recommend it, not least for the virtual kleptocracy tour of London guided by the inimitable Roman Borisovich.
If you haven’t previously come across Roman, check out his previous and alarmingly convincing appearance as “Boris” — a corrupt Russian health minister supposedly buying property in London — while being secretly filmed for the 2015 documentary From Russia with Cash, alongside his “mistress,” the Ukrainian investigative journalist Natalia Sedletska.
You will also surely appreciate, if not perhaps enjoy, our version of the Eurovision song contest – or “kleptovision”, as Daria Kaleniuk called it – featuring three oligarchs’ children from different ex-Soviet states, all of whom have spent large amount of their daddies’ cash trying to realize their dreams of pop stardom, with mixed results. I’m afraid you’ll have missed the chance of voting for a winner out of the three but don’t take it too much to heart: in a very real sense, in comparison, we all of us are losers.