Gas-powered kingmaker: how the UK welcomed Putin’s man in Ukraine

Oligarch Dmitry Firtash is wanted by the FBI for bribery. Nonetheless, he was received into the heart of the British establishment

If you want a physical manifestation of Britain's unquestioning acceptance of oligarchs and its refusal to examine the origin of their wealth, you need to take a walk past Harrods towards the Victoria and Albert Museum.

After about 200 metres, you will see on the right-hand side of the road the unmistakable burgundy glazed tiles of a tube station. That is your destination. You can't get on the underground here, because the station stopped accepting passengers decades ago and became a Ministry of Defence office. But it still has the platforms and shafts of a tube station, and that's why it came to the attention of a former banker called Ajit Chambers in 2009. Chambers had a plan, which he revealed at one of the public events that Boris Johnson used to hold when he was the mayor of London.