Congratulations to the Guardian and its partners for the asset-tracking project ($17bn of global assets linked to 35 Russians with alleged ties to Putin, 21 March). Let us hope that the whole grubby episode of golden visas for the global rich, only recently stopped, will serve as an object lesson to British governments of every hue.
We should begin future-proofing as far as we can. It has been clear for years that foreign ownership of UK property and land must be restricted. Any involvement by offshore trusts should be banned. These restrictions would help prevent, or limit, situations like the present one. More importantly, with a housing shortage that affects large numbers of us, such restrictions would help constrain increasingly ridiculous property prices. In 2018, as part of a policy to curb rocketing house prices, New Zealand banned the sale of homes to many foreign purchasers. Increasingly, countries in Europe and beyond are restricting foreign property and/or land ownership in the interests of their citizens.
It does no favours to any of us if successive governments fail to legislate to prevent the sale of properties to those who use them as vanity projects (often unlived in), and the UK merely as a secure vault for their billions. Our housing policy needs urgent and radical change, and our government needs to address this now.
Anne Rothschild
London
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