UK report blames the British government and ‘enablers’ for years of Russian meddling
LONDON — Russia has mounted a prolonged, sophisticated campaign to meddle in Britain’s democracy, according to a longdelayed report released Tuesday by a British parliamentary committee, but it is not clear whether its tactics swayed one of the most consequential votes in modern British history: to leave the European Union.
In saying they were unable to make that judgment, the report’s authors directed some of their harshest criticism not at Russia but at successive British governments, which they said had ignored years of warning signs about Russian malfeasance. Even after questions about the 2016 Brexit referendum, the report found, intelligence agencies failed to properly investigate whether Russia’s actions altered the outcome.
It raised a troubling question: Who is protecting British democracy?
“No one is,” was the answer given by the authors.
“The outrage isn’t if there is interference,” said Kevan Jones, a Labour Party member of Parliament who served on the intelligence committee that released the report. “The outrage is no one wanted to know if there was interference.”
The release of the report came more than seven months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party racked up an 80-seat majority in Parliament and almost 18 months after the end of the inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body that oversees the country’s spy agencies.
Still, it was eagerly awaited in Britain, where anxieties about Russia’s behavior range from influence-peddling with oligarchs in London to the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence agent and his daughter in Salisbury, England.
The report described how British politicians had welcomed oligarchs to London, allowing them to launder their illicit money through what it called the London “laundromat.” A growth industry of “enablers” — lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and public relations consultants — sprang up to serve their needs.
These people, the report said, “played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state.”
Several members of the House of Lords, the report said, had business interests linked to Russia or worked for companies with Russian ties. It urged an investigation of them, though it did not name any names.