Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Paranoid? Quite possibly, but it’s the price of survival

The Times

Wealthy Russians have moved to the Home Counties not to indulge a love of golf but to find shelter from what they see as predatory tax authorities, intrusive secret policemen, politicised courts and the infighting of the business caste that had a habit of turning nasty.

The high walls of gated communities in Surrey or the reassuring proximity of Windsor Great Park have not taken away the fear, however. Some assassination plots are imagined, others are real but botched. And, sometimes, a rich man drops dead in Leatherhead or Weybridge, far away from home.

The sudden death of Alexander Perepilichny, 44, and the apparent heart failure of Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, the Georgian entrepreneur, may not have been hits — but suspicions linger on. There are too many scores being settled, too many open feuds between Russia and the exiled Russians of Britain, to have blind faith in an innocent death.

When German Gorbuntsov, 45, a banker, was shot in Canary Wharf in March it seemed to some Russians that to be paranoid was to be in full possession of the facts. He survived — but it appeared to demonstrate the deadly reach of Russian vengeance.