For years stories have circulated about money laundering taking place in the UK, specifically through London entities. The latest expose in Sarawak Report adds flesh to those bare bones in the City.

It is bad enough that British off-shore colonies are in daily use as money laundries and bases for tax evasion, both by British nationals and a rag bag of foreign crooks. It is worse, much worse, that such activities cannot possibly be unknown to the island governments concerned nor, crucially, to the FCO in London.

Turning a blind eye to crime is not, in the British justice system, a legal option. Indeed it usually amounts to abetment or being accessory to the authors of the financial crime in question. There are, one may assume, police and judicial authorities in such British colonies and possessions. Are British voters to assume that the governments they put in office are complicit in this offshore crime? Much of it is happening in places under direct British rule and for which the British government is as much responsible as it is for UK based fraud and similar financial crime.

Might the British public, which has the privilege of paying for these mega laundries, have an explanation from the UK authorities; whose salaries and pensions they also have the privilege of paying? We are not holding our breath.