CARL MORTISHED: Why we keep doing business with the Kremlin’s cronies

No such restraint in Washington, where the US Treasury has fired a blunderbuss at Russian billionaires with links to the Kremlin. Their assets will be frozen and they are barred from doing business in America and with Americans, including US banks. One of them, Oleg Deripaska, could find his core business, the aluminium combine Rusal, in serious trouble. Its share price halved this week as investors concluded that Rusal’s ability to conduct business in US dollars is threatened.

The US list of tycoons to be tormented is a bit scattergun; why Deripaska but not Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club — believed to be a favourite of President Putin? However, such random economic violence may be the point. A bit like a gangster with a machine-gun, the message from Washington is clear: get your goons off our lawn or we will mow them down.

The difference between Donald Trump’s bare-knuckle punch and Theresa May’s hand in glove is more than diplomatic style. America can afford to shun Russia — its economy is small, about the size of Italy. Russia sells almost nothing that America needs but competes as an oil exporter. ExxonMobil was forced to pull out of Siberia because of earlier US sanctions against Rosneft and its chief executive, Igor Sechin, a long-standing comrade of the Russian president. Tough luck, thinks the man in the White House.

Too tough, thinks the woman in Downing Street. It’s a moot point whether Britain can afford to shun Russia. Unlike ExxonMobil, Britain’s flagship oil company has yet to suffer pain from US and EU sanctions against Rosneft. BP owns almost a fifth of the Russian company but BP chief executive Bob Dudley diplomatically opts out of board meetings attended by Sechin.

The British approach to commercial relationships with pariah states can be expressed in godfatherly terms: it may be personal but we can dress it up as business. For Britain, there is a price to pay for playing host as the world’s commercial trading capital. The Government has legal tools, “unexplained wealth orders”, to force President Putin’s cronies to identify the source of the money that paid for their London mansions. Perhaps the Prime Minister will find the courage to make an example with one or two egregious cases. But to set a precedent that only those with clean hands can do business in London would be a step too far for a nation about to set sail alone on the high seas of global trade.

Without the economic power of the EU, Britain will have to take the view that a buck is a buck. London is the UK’s engine and its job is to process and service foreign capital, much of it in flight. In the first half of last year, Chinese investors spent £4 billion on London real estate, an accelerating tide of cash. These Chinese reckon Brexit is a small risk compared with the gangster economy back home.

Why would we ever put that flow of foreign cash through a moral filter? After all, it’s not personal, it’s strictly business.