Russian Assets: Seizure

Debate between Chris Bryant and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I would happily welcome that. It is a very good idea.

Ultimately, the war Putin initiated on Ukraine must now be punished in a variety of ways. It is unwarranted aggression against another country, and it therefore changes how international law should be applied. We should readjust and redefine international law to the new reality that Putin’s invasion has brought about. The old order is now broken, and we need to redefine it to make sure that the lesson for any other oligarch, future leader or demagogue is that they can never again hide behind these rules.

Although international law is always evolving, we need to recognise the exceptional nature of Russia’s aggression and conduct in Ukraine, as that is critical to what we do next. Russia’s aggression and invasion are breaches of the most fundamental principles of international law and order. Russia is aware of this breach but has not stopped its conduct, and it continues to threaten international security and peace. That unprecedented conduct creates a need for all Governments in the west to amend their laws together to deter other states. These amendments should use specific and limited criteria to preserve sovereign immunity in all cases. It is possible to do both without hiding behind the idea that sovereign immunity is an absolute that cannot be breached. Putin has breached it, and in future that should be the rule.

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill could and should be strengthened to enable the seizure of undisclosed assets—that is the key. We already have a vehicle. It is wholly possible to make that difference, and to make it quite quickly. I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I hope she will give that serious consideration, as it is really important.

As we know, sanctions evasion is already an offence. Embedding a new “disclosure or lose it” principle would go a long way to ensuring that sanctioned oligarchs are no longer able to conceal their dirty money here with impunity. That would help us to clean up what became a bad reputation for the City of London, whereby much of that ill-gotten money was hiding here, in one of the leading nations of the free world, and we did little or nothing to stop that.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I get a bit frustrated when I keep hearing the Government talking about how many people we are sanctioning. There is no point in sanctioning people unless we enforce those sanctions. I find it difficult to comprehend that so far we have fined only two firms in this country. I am sure that there are many more sanctions busters in the UK than have thus far been revealed. It is important that that is not allowed to proceed with impunity, is it not?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Of course, I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. Interestingly, if we manage to criminalise the failure to disclose sanctioned assets, we are halfway there on his point, because they cannot then escape. If we prove that sanctions evasion is taking place, this can be the basis for asset recovery in due course; we would then have a reason why we should be doing this, not just because of the criminal purpose, but for the fact that we would actually be able to gain funds.

Points of Order

Debate between Chris Bryant and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I raise one specific issue that is directly linked with this? I discovered one day ago—overnight, almost—that the Government had tabled amendment 60, which will add certain offences to the list of offences that are not eligible for statutory defence for victims of modern-day slavery. Whether or not this amendment improves the Bill, the truth is that we have had no chance to scrutinise it at all, and it will be done today and gone. My concern is that this is a delicate area, often dealing with people who have very great problems, and I simply want to ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker, whether it is feasible for us to raise a complaint that this is becoming an abuse of the House.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In addition, it is notable that a large chunk of the Bill has been added. It is an important chunk of the Bill, which I know that the Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), supported because he was on the Foreign Affairs Committee when we called for the registration of foreign agents. That has now been put in the Bill, but it was added only in Committee and not given much time to be debated there. We have not had a full opportunity to analyse the clauses that have been added. We have significant numbers of Government amendments today and we are not even going to have two hours in which to debate them. Surely it would be possible for the Minister to stand up now and say, “This is national security and it is a matter that we need to get right. We cannot just expect another place to consider these matters. We are going to do our job of scrutiny properly and we will allow additional time to debate them on another day.”

Sanctions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called at this particular point, Madam Deputy Speaker. So that I do not end up repeating them, I first associate myself completely with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat).

We can do, we should do and we must do more to root out the dirty money that flows through there. That is not to blame us—in some senses it goes through New York as well—but we should collectively ensure that we target those people. I am told that Putin has squirrelled away more than $250 billion around the world through his oligarchs; they are not actually wealthy individuals, but only nominally wealthy, because it is his money, which he has stolen from the Russian state. We should seek that out and nail it down, collectively, as nations in the free world.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I appreciate the difficulty the Government are in over this matter. The Government want to play their hand carefully, and I understand that; they want to deliver such that President Putin and co. have to pull back. The question, therefore, is not whether the Government are right to want to do that—we support them in wanting to do so—but whether the means that the Government have willed to themselves are enough.

I also speak as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions, with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). We have already listed names, and I genuinely and carefully question why my Government had not done more to sanction people already, long before this final crisis erupted—people in Russia, China, the United States and around the world who are clearly identifiable as in need of being sanctioned under the Magnitsky rules that we passed. I am ready to give the Government a list, and I know he feels exactly the same. He probably has it there.

[Chris Bryant]

indicated assent.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I knew he would have it. We want to see that list actioned.

The trouble right now is that we have had the debate about President Putin and the Russians invading Ukraine as though they were about to invade Ukraine. I keep banging on about this: they have invaded Ukraine. They took over Crimea in 2014 and created this nonsense about separatists in the Donbas region, loads of whom we know to be Russian soldiers, dressed up in different uniforms and creating merry hell. There is no way on earth that they would have held the Ukrainian forces off for this long were it not for the fact that they have some very sophisticated support coming in from Russia. There is an idea that somehow the Russians are invading, but they are not—they have already invaded. Therefore, we have the right to do something about it.

The question therefore is what we do about it. In 2014 we let ourselves down: we did next to nothing. I was in Government at the time and I felt concern then, but the reality is that we did not do enough. The problem in dealing with dictators is that if we do not act early and act hard, the lesson they learn is that we will never act and we will always give way at the end. When will those lessons be learned? We have been through it time and again. Dictators have a single purpose. The problem with democracy is that we have many thoughts, many ideas and many people to bring with us, but we too should have a central purpose.

I have some questions for my right hon. Friend the Minister. Much as I really support what the Government have done, I cannot understand why we have not done much more immediately. Going now and going hard should be the way. If there are other things we are planning to do, there are many others we should be sanctioning—I mentioned one individual earlier in an intervention—and many other levers we could pull.

I do not understand—but perhaps my right hon. Friend can explain to me—why we have not driven forward on the SWIFT banking system or the trading of sovereign debt, which would affect the Russians very much. I agree that the Germans have moved swiftly, as we know, to suspend Nord Stream 2—I would like to see them end the whole idea of it—but if they are going to do more, we should be co-operating with them and going in hard ourselves this one time.

Will my right hon. Friend therefore keep this statutory instrument open so that we could even return to it tomorrow, if necessary, to add to the whole process and take it even further? We have to do more and we have to do it harder than we have done now, because President Putin will not take any lessons.

I come back to the question I asked earlier. Bearing in mind that the Russians still sit in Crimea and still have areas of Donbas, which in a way they were unofficially occupying but now have occupied, what I do not quite understand is what this first phase of sanctions is actually meant to do. I am utterly puzzled by it. Is it meant to say, “Thus far and no further”? My right hon. Friend said that it is meant to say, “Get back.” But if so, then we have to hit very hard with everything we have got, such that President Putin and his cohorts around him suddenly say to themselves, “They really mean business. They are united across the democracies.”