The New York Times has just turned out a long, worthy article on New York real estate owned through shell companies:
On the 74th floor of the Time Warner Center, Condominium 74B was purchased in 2010 for $15.65 million by a secretive entity called 25CC ST74B L.L.C. It traces to the family of Vitaly Malkin, a former Russian senator and banker who was barred from entering Canada because of suspected connections to organized crime.
Last fall, another shell company bought a condo down the hall for $21.4 million from a Greek businessman named Dimitrios Contominas, who was arrested a year ago as part of a corruption sweep in Greece.
This kind of story tends to leave me a bit confused. Isn’t it already a cliche that luxury New York (and London) real estate gets bought by dodgy businessmen and Russian oligarchs? I’m still glad it gets written, because sometimes the journalists will turn up something actually criminal, and the attention increases the chances of getting real estate sales subject to tighter “know your customer” rules. But I don’t really see why people outside the niche of corruption-tracking should care