By Joseph Sipalan

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For decades, London’s property market has offered sanctuary to fortunes of murky origins, its red-brick mansions and gleaming office blocks standing as monuments to global impunity.
Now, as anti-corruption watchdogs from Malaysia to Bangladesh demand justice, Britain is once again forced to reckon with its role as the world’s premier laundromat for kleptocrats.
Malaysia’s investigators revealed earlier this month that they were investigating the alleged London-based assets of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. He has denied the claims, but the announcement has revived scrutiny of Britain’s role as a safe haven for wealth derived from suspected corruption across Southeast Asia and the wider region.
In June, British authorities froze property assets worth US$180 million at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s request as part of an investigation into the fortune of late Malaysian tycoon Daim Zainuddin, a close confidant of Mahathir.

The holdings include two commercial buildings in the City of London and luxury homes and apartments in Marylebone and Bayswater.
The outward flow of capital from Malaysia into UK real estate is hardly a new phenomenon. Experts say illicit funds are frequently mixed in with legitimate assets and routed through shell companies and offshore structures that render their origins all but untraceable.
In 2020, US authorities estimated that US$340 million in British property had been acquired with funds stolen from 1MDB, Malaysia’s plundered state investment fund, and funnelled through tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.
“London is a natural choice for most of [Malaysia’s] elites to keep or buy property. The close relationship [between Malaysia and the UK] makes them more comfortable to park their money there,” said political analyst Azmi Hassan.

“Most probably these elites are also very familiar with the UK and because they bought their properties via the legal process they are confident it will be safe.”
But Malaysia is far from the only country to be affected. In May, the UK’s National Crime Agency froze nearly £90 million (HK$934 million) in luxury property believed to be owned by associates of Bangladesh’s ousted leader, Sheikh Hasina.
A subsequent investigation by Transparency International UK linked more than £400 million in property – including Mayfair mansions, Surrey estates and Merseyside flats – to Hasina’s regime.
These revelations triggered a wave of political fallout. After being implicated, Hasina’s niece, Tulip Siddiq, was forced to step down as a minister in Britain’s finance ministry, a post carrying oversight of anti-corruption efforts.

The collapse of Hasina’s 15-year rule, toppled by student protests in August last year, has deepened scrutiny of her finances while in power.
“That the UK has accepted funds now under scrutiny is unfortunately no surprise,” Transparency International UK said in a statement. “For decades, we have rolled out the red carpet to the world’s oligarchs and dictators, provided they brought their wealth along with them.”
Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, estimates US$234 billion was looted during Hasina’s tenure – a figure her allies vociferously dispute.
Across Asia, the pattern is grimly familiar. In Singapore, the last of 10 Chinese nationals implicated in a US$2.2 billion money laundering ring was jailed last year. Two of the accused are alleged to have purchased US$56 million worth of central London property, using an offshore vehicle to acquire adjoining Oxford Street addresses.

Despite mounting pressure, Britain’s legislative response has lagged. Since 2018, the UK’s parliament has pushed for greater transparency, including public registers of beneficial ownership in its overseas territories.
But according to Transparency International, the five British overseas territories in the Caribbean – including the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands – remain key cogs in the global money-laundering machine, with up to £250 billion in illicit proceeds from 79 countries funnelled through them over the past 30 years.
Four out of five of these jurisdictions missed a June deadline to implement transparency pledges, despite two earlier extensions.
Such corruption comes with a high human cost. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates developing nations lose up to US$40 billion annually to bribery, misappropriation and other abuses.

“This is why recovery of these proceeds is particularly important for developing countries, including Asean member countries,” the UNODC said in its asset recovery guidelines, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
But in a region long inured to impunity, change may be afoot. A wave of public fury has swept away the old certainties.
In Nepal, scores died earlier this month in protests over alleged plundering by the political elite. In Indonesia, President Prabowo Subianto was forced to roll back generous pay rises for lawmakers and reshuffle his cabinet after riots broke out over surging living costs amid corruption claims.
London’s skyline may still glitter, but for millions across Asia, it stands as a monument to fortunes built on stolen dreams and a system still struggling to hold the powerful to account.