Surprisingly the River Thames is considered to be the cleanest river to run through a major city in the world. The same can’t be said though for the money river that courses through the arteries and veins of London’s financial institutions which has been contaminated, for decades, by “dirty money” from Russia, other dubious countries and pariah states.

It is remarkable that it has taken a war in Ukraine to make our politicians, lawyers and other ‘movers and shakers’ in the country to realise what they had been doing for years was just plain wrong and have now been forced to re-set the moral compass.

Hopefully it will mean an end to the wealth and profit many have made from managing such ill begotten gains. Somehow I probably think not.

Besides Russian money, many more billions have been washed clean by some of the Middle East’s oil sheikhs.

Saudi Arabia has one of the worst human rights records in the world.Yet our Prime Minister recently visited and was received by the Crown Prince like a long lost friend to do business with him on Britain’s behalf.

Saudi Arabia has been pursuing a war in Yemen for the last eight years, supported by our country selling them weapons.....the result is Yemen is now a devastated land with over a quarter of a million killed and a humanitarian crisis beyond our imagination.What is happening in the Yemen is no different from what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

Recently a Saudi Arabian consortium bought one of our great football clubs...Newcastle United. The FA sanctioned the deal having been ‘convinced’ that the Crown Prince had no connection with the sale, yet he is only the chairman of the Saudi Public Investment Fund which has now got an 80 per cent stake in the club. Who’s kidding who?

Sheikh Mansour of the United Arab Emirates, the owner of Manchester City, welcomed President Assad to his country recently and greeted him like a brother...yes the same President Assad who has spent the last years waging a war against his own people and killing thousands of them with the help of Russia.

Like Abramovich at Chelsea many billionaires from Russia or the Middle East have not passed the acid test and are not, never have been and never will be “fit and proper” persons to be involved in British business or institutions.

Colin Morrison