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Russia’s Infiltration of Britain shows The Reach of Its Dirty Money
And its likely effect on global peace and stability.
Russia, in the late 1990s was in great turmoil.
Its economy was unravelling faster than anyone could imagine. Its perpetually inebriated leader, Boris Yeltsin had pioneered the loans for shares scheme, in which vast swathes of the Russian Industry was handed to private individuals, in return for cash, to shore up its liquidity.
But this move made absolutely no difference, as Russia would default on its debts to the international monetary fund, thus shaking the global economy to its very core in 1998.
Just as the reverberations of Russia’s liquidity problems were felt on Wall Street with the collapse of Long Term Capital Management — a hedge fund outfit, which had a few Nobel Prize winning economists on its books — its effects were felt much harder on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg, as people were scavenging for food, using vouchers that the government had given them as a means of exchange, with those who stood to profit from the ensuing chaos.
As with all seismic political and economic events, there were winners and losers.
And Russia’s economic collapse had created a new class of individuals who would be known as the Oligarchs.