European politics has faced two big challenges in recent years. The first is the rise of the far right to power, including the Freedom Party's seizure of power in the Netherlands in 2023, the rising popularity of the Rassemblement Nationale party in France, and the rapid rise of Alternative for Germany in 2025.
The second is Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which has spilled over into Europe, causing severe social and economic disruption and leading to sweeping economic sanctions against Russia, including personal restrictions, mainly on oligarchs.
Can it be argued that these two phenomena are somehow related? Yes and no, I would say. All those decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europe became a kind of “promised land” for the nouveau riche from all post-Soviet countries. It is no exaggeration to say that most billionaires from this region have owned luxury real estate in Europe, as well as European passports and/or residence permits.
Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, such immigration rarely caused concern, let alone provoked political campaigns, as the Eurasian super-rich effectively utilised all the opportunities afforded by the European judicial system to members of the global financial elite.
But times have changed - and there has been a shift. The more hostile that Russia and other authoritarian post-Soviet states became, the more attention was paid to their citizens. Dozens of wealthy Russians were denied the right to enter Europe despite having a residence permit in the EU, the UK or Switzerland. Some found themselves under house arrest in countries where they had legally obtained citizenship.
However, one category of people seems to have escaped these problems - or at least successfully confronted them time and again. Coincidentally, these people are not oligarchs who support Putin, Lukashenka or Aliyev - they are, on the contrary, fraudsters and swindlers known for creating giant pyramids, looting banks or misappropriating public funds in their countries. Most of them, I would argue, rose to the top of their business careers through close ties to local leaders who held power for decades - until their criminal activities made them “opposition politicians,” persecuted ostensibly for their ideas and beliefs.
In recent years, such people have often been referred to as “banksters” — a portmanteau of “bankers” and “gangsters” that originated in the United States during the Great Depression, when public outrage over predatory financial practices likened some financiers to organised criminals who used economic manipulation instead of guns or brute force. What struck me most about these stories - and still does - was the indifference of the Western judicial system in trying to take their asylum claims seriously in the UK, France and elsewhere.
The earliest and most telling cases were two Russian financiers, Andrei Borodin and Sergei Pugachev, who collapsed their banks and fled to Britain and France.
Both participated in Russian politics as Kremlin confidants (Pugachev was even a member of the upper house of parliament) and held accounts of federal ministries and the Moscow mayor's office in their banks. After their flight, the Bank of Russia was forced to issue more than $14 billion in emergency funding to both banks and then merge them with state-owned banks. Both were granted political asylum, Russia's extradition requests went unanswered, and Interpol warrants were canceled as “politically motivated.” After hitting the headlines in 2012 over his £140 million purchase of Britain's most expensive villa, Mr. Borodin still lives in Britain despite a 14-year prison sentence in Russia.
Many other “banksters” and corrupt officials have followed suit. Only one - former Moscow Region Finance Minister Alexei Kuznetsov - was deported to Russia, mainly because French police accused him of using a forged passport.
Another interesting case is that of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former Kazakh financier, who fled Kazakhstan in 2009 after being implicated in a $6 billion fraud at BTA Bank which he headed at the time. Despite a UK conviction for contempt of court and perjury, and facing extradition demands for stolen assets, Ablyazov managed to evade justice. He sought asylum in the UK in 2011, then moved to France in 2013, where he briefly received asylum in 2020. It was revoked two years later, and he has since challenged the decision.
His success in avoiding extradition has largely relied on his portrayal as an anti-totalitarian political dissident. Various NGOs, such as the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), have supported this narrative. The latter has published numerous reports focusing on Ablyazov's enemies, including government officials, businessmen, and banks of Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.
Even more striking are his twitter posts, in which he calls for “investing” money into his efforts to overthrow the Kazakhstani government, promising hundredfold returns on donated funds. Despite his controversial past, Ablyazov continues to leverage legal and diplomatic channels to avoid extradition.
Another case that came to light a few months ago involves two Russian bankers, Sergei Leontiev and Alexander Zheleznyak, whose financial institution, Probusinessbank, lost $900 million in 2015 due to loans to offshore companies they themselves controlled and was subsequently declared bankrupt by a Russian court. Both men fled Russia, where they were arrested in absentia, and spent several years in Europe and the US looking for suitable defense schemes. In 2023, Liechtenstein authorities rejected Russia's extradition request, saying the charges were political in nature.
There are many such stories, and each time a new case arises, the same question arises: how can European authorities ensure that wealthy fraudsters from around the world aren’t able to exploit the asylum system to escape accountability for their crimes? European ambiguity of standards often results in genuine vulnerable refugees ending up in prison instead, where they wait years for a decision and risk their lives (in the last three years for example, several gay and transgender people fleeing Russia - where the LGBT movement is officially recognized as extremist – have died or committed suicide in Dutch facilities).
But when it comes to the “banksters,” Europe somehow paradoxically contributes to legitimising their image as “freedom fighters”. And it seems that Europe even reinforces this tendency: the more absurd the arguments of the accused, the more often they are successful.
