The latest mysterious death in the UK of a plutocrat from the former USSR has triggered a slew of press articles about just how many of these folks have settled here. More than 100,000, apparently.
The Times has a piece today about how London came to be their bolthole of choice, but it doesn't actually throw any light on that question. I think it's pretty obvious why they choose London: the non-dom tax rules. These may have been put in place to encourage foreign bankers to locate here, but the rules are totally non-discriminatory. The Russians (and Georgians and Ukrainians and the rest) can bring their "controversial" (if you're charitable) or "ill-gotten" (if you're not) fortunes here and pay minimal tax and face minimal disclosure. It's quite likely that they now hugely outnumber the "fat cat" investment bankers in the ranks of the non-doms, and they certainly far surpass them in wealth -- and, therefore, in tax avoided.
Still, we can be grateful that Alstair Darling is backing away from his plans to boost taxation of non-doms. After all, we wouldn't want to lose our front row seats for the next mob hit.
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