Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

To conclude, wherever Wagner operate, they have a catastrophic effect on communities, worsening conflicts and damaging the reputations of countries that host them. Wagner may be at their most vulnerable and Russia’s military leaders may be grappling to regain control of the organisation, but the brutal methods they have employed will undoubtedly remain a tool of the Russian state. Let there be no misunderstanding: in whatever form Wagner take, we and our allies will pursue them. We will expose them and we will disrupt them. Wagner are a terrorist organisation and we must not be afraid of saying so. We will hold Russia to account for its use of these malign groups—these international gangsters—and the destruction they bring around the world. We will continue to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression, and we will confront and challenge terrorism however and wherever it occurs.

The shadow Home Secretary has consistently raised the challenges involved in using counter-terror legislation to proscribe state-sponsored organisations such as Wagner. We have long called for the introduction of a bespoke proscribing mechanism designed specifically to address state-sponsored threats. The Government’s Contest update published in July stated:

“The most pressing national security priority is now the threat from Russia to European security.”

Yet the strategy does not set out a comprehensive response to the national security threats posed by states and state-sponsored actors. I would therefore be grateful if the Home Secretary outlined what robust action the Government are taking to tackle those threats.

There are many people and organisations in the world that we could call a force for good. Wagner are at the opposite end of that spectrum. They are a force for evil wherever they are. Their track record is one of violence, theft and murder, from Ukraine to Syria, and from Mali to Mozambique. They helped to spearhead the takeover of Crimea in 2014 and has carried out appalling war crimes since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. They have been implicated in massacres of civilians and increasing abuses by security forces in multiple other countries. In places such as the Central African Republic they have offered a business model essentially trading violence for natural resources, turbocharging the abusive extraction of minerals that has driven so much conflict and corruption in weak states around the world.

As of July, the Government had sanctioned fewer than a quarter of the 81 individuals and entities the Foreign Affairs Committee recently identified as being linked to Wagner. I ask the Home Secretary to give an assurance that the Government are looking closely at those individuals and working to ensure that, where possible, sanctions are applied. As the Committee also pointed out in its excellent report, Wagner are

“a sprawling, decentralised network of individuals and commercial entities…for which the ‘membership’ is not always clear.”

The presumed assassination of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin may hasten the break-up of the organisation, but there is little doubt that their work could continue under different names, by the same or different individuals. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, working with her colleagues across Government, steps are being taken to ensure that the UK is ready to respond to such a scenario?

Of course, the threat posed by Wagner is multiplied exponentially because of their links to the Kremlin. It fits neatly within a pattern of crime, corruption and kleptocracy that poses a much wider danger. Russian information and election subversion operations, which Wagner supported and which have targeted the UK, among other countries, will not go away, not least because other countries are imitating them, but by proscribing the group we demonstrate an important commitment towards protecting our democratic values. I completely understand that the Home Secretary will be limited in what she can say, but given the activities of Wagner it would be helpful were she able to say something about the progress that the defending democracy taskforce is making.

We also need to consider ways in which the UK may itself be facilitating the profits of Wagner’s backers and those like them. For example, research by Transparency International UK suggests that since 2016, £1.5 billion-worth of UK property was bought by Russians accused of corruption or with links to the Kremlin. More than half of that is held through companies in Britain’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies. More than 2,000 companies registered in those areas were used in 48 Russian money laundering and corruption cases, involving more than £82 billion of illicit funds. What is the betting that some of those beneficiaries are linked to Wagner? What is the harm to our security being done even by those who are not?

I know that the Home Secretary will not consider this proscription as job done, and will see it as just an important further step towards disrupting and defeating Wagner’s murderous terrorist activities. While I am conscious that she will be limited in what she is able to say, I would be grateful if she could say something about what steps the Government are taking to strengthen financial transparency and accountability in the UK, in our dependencies and overseas.

The Labour party strongly supports the motion. We will work constructively to stand against the evils of terrorism, and I look forward to hearing from the Home Secretary on the questions that I have put to her.

“the specific threat that it poses to British nationals overseas”.

Given the scale of the activities that Wagner Group are involved in, they would clearly pass that test. However, the IRGC is an indispensable part of the chain of hostage taking that has a direct impact on the safety of UK nationals and particularly UK dual nationals abroad, including in Iran. Why are we not seeing that linkage here?

The fourth test is

“the extent of the organisation’s presence in the UK”.

I am not quite clear about the extent of Wagner’s presence in the UK—I can understand its impact on the UK, but I do not quite grasp its presence in the UK. However, I am very clear about Iran’s presence here and the IRGC’s role in using its propaganda base to incite extremism in the UK.

The fifth test is

“the need to support international partners in the fight against terrorism.”

My right hon. and learned Friend has quite rightly set out a number of countries that are our partners in the international community and should be getting our support in the fight against Wagner Group and their interests in their own countries. However, we know that the IRGC is the export bureau for terrorism in the region, to its neighbours and beyond. We have had so many examples, from Hezbollah onwards.

Then we come to the linkage. The IRGC in Iran has huge control over the means of production in that country. It is inconceivable that it was not intricately involved in the production of the drones that Iran sent to Russia for the oppression of the Ukrainian people. If war crimes have been carried out by Russia, the means of carrying out those crimes has at least part of its origin in Tehran with the IRGC. It is essential that we tackle that as quickly as we can.

No one will disagree that Wagner is an evil, dangerous and malign grouping, but I would argue that they are no worse than the IRGC, which is not being proscribed by the Government. Indeed, the Prime Minister, in seeking the leadership of the Conservative party, was very supportive of the concept of proscribing the IRGC, so why this inactivity? I understand that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will have to have discussions and there will be a strong input from the Foreign Office in this. She has been a tough and robust Home Secretary, something that many of us greatly appreciate, but we are well behind the curve compared with the United States when it comes to the IRGC, and our failure to tackle what is a malign influence in the world today is damaging Britain’s reputation in the world beyond.

I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to consult urgently with the rest of Government to see whether we should not be coming back to this Chamber as quickly as possible and adding the IRGC to the groups that this country will rightly proscribe because of their impact on this country, our citizens, the safety of countries beyond, our allies and international law itself.

“Proscribing Wagner sends a clear message that the UK will not tolerate Russia’s proxies and their barbaric actions in Ukraine, and condemns Wagner’s campaign of corruption and bloodshed on the African continent, which has been repeatedly linked to human rights violations.”

That is all fine and well, but why was this not done sooner? I would like answers from the Home Secretary on that. Acting sooner may have stemmed some of that bloodshed and some of what has happened, and may have sent a clearer message more widely at a much earlier stage. If the organisation was indeed founded in 2014, that means that we have now been waiting nine years for this measure, and a lot of destruction has passed since.

Designating Wagner Group for proscription is a response to repeated requests from Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who has called for the group to be treated as a terrorist organisation. Can the Home Secretary tell us when he first made that request of the Government, and what response has been given to him? Clearly, we support President Zelensky and want him to succeed in his endeavours, but it would be useful to know the timeline and when the Government responded to that request.

On the wider situation, organisations that work for Wagner Group depend on the flow of funds that often wash up through bank accounts in the United Kingdom. We know about the UK’s reputation as a hub for laundering dirty money. Prior to this debate, the House dealt with the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which could do more still to ensure that we know who owns and benefits from various types of financial structures. Is the Home Secretary satisfied that that legislation will go far enough to prevent the sons, daughters, relatives and associates of Wagner Group members from moving money through accounts here in the UK? We should do everything we can, in light of Prigozhin’s actions to evade UK sanctions, to shut down Wagner Group wherever they might sprout up.

The Foreign Affairs Committee has branded the UK Government’s efforts to deter Wagner Group “underwhelming in the extreme” and recommends that the Conservative party revive at the earliest opportunity the 2019 manifesto commitment to spending 0.7% of the UK’s gross national income on official development assistance. Russia, and China to an extent, are exploiting and seeking to put their influence into the gap left by UK development assistance. As we pull back from that influence that we have had in the world, we do not want countries to be turning to states such as Russia, and to groups such as Wagner that work on their behalf. Will the Home Secretary comment on what more can be done to ensure that we counter such nefarious influence? Once states go down that road, it can be very difficult to come back, and we know from countries in Africa that the result of that will also end up on the Home Secretary’s desk in the form of people seeking asylum in this country, fleeing from wars that we could have done more to prevent had we clamped down and had we provided aid at a different stage. All of this is interconnected, and all of it comes through her Department.

The Foreign Affairs Committee has also commented that it has received no evidence of any serious effort by the UK Government to track Wagner Network’s activities in countries other than Ukraine. That is perhaps not directly within the Home Secretary’s remit, but could she comment a wee bit further on the tracking of the Wagner Group’s activities—on how closely the UK state is monitoring those activities to ensure we understand where they are now and, crucially, where they might be going next? They appear to have a very nimble organisation that can change and evolve, so we need to be mindful that although Prigozhin is gone, there are plenty of people to replace him within that organisation. What they are doing is clearly lucrative, so we need to have that intelligence and analysis of their network to make sure we are keeping a close eye on what happens next, and what more the UK state can do to intervene in it.

Can the Home Secretary talk a bit more about the further sanctions on civilian enablers and frontmen, which I touched on a little when we were debating the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill? There are people in this country, I am certain, who are facilitating a lot of the movement of finance. We have the opportunity to go further than is proposed in the order to look at those frontmen and those who give the organisation its corporate face. Will the UK Government have a regular mechanism for co-ordinating with allies about sanctions—prioritising travel bans, for example—to make sure that those actors involved in Wagner do not get to move around? Is the Magnitsky sanctions list also co-ordinated with today’s action, and will more sanctions on that list follow? I know that it is not the done thing to say who is going to be sanctioned, but it would be good to get some reassurance that that list is continually under review.

Finally, it would also be useful to know what further mechanisms there are for oversight in this House. We need to be keeping a closer eye on this issue: it should not have taken nine years to get to where we are today. What more will be done to make sure that this is an effective mechanism—that we are keeping a very close eye on this organisation and its operatives, and doing everything we can as a good ally to Ukraine to make sure that all our actions are co-ordinated, working with other allies to make sure everything that can possibly be done to shut down this evil terrorist organisation is done, and done quickly?

On sanctions, which were mentioned by the Home Secretary, my colleagues in the House of Lords have recently raised the issue of joint ventures that operate between the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Wagner Group and countries such as Sudan. I join my colleagues in the Lords in hoping that the Government might update money laundering regulations with haste to ensure that these loopholes are closed, because we know these loopholes exist.

I would like to remind the House of a debate we had in January, when we debated the openDemocracy report that exposed how the Government assisted—assisted—Yevgeny Prigozhin in evading sanctions to launch a legal attack on a British journalist. Special licences issued in 2021 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, now the Prime Minister, enabled this move, despite sanctions that had been imposed in 2020 to prevent such dealings with Prigozhin. As I said at the time, that one of the most notorious criminals in the world—and now a UK proscribed terrorist, albeit dead—might have evaded sanctions to sue a British journalist should not have happened, and we still need answers about what happened.

The other thing that remains an unanswered question—again, this is linked—is the issue of golden visas, which lies squarely in the Department of the Home Secretary. Yes, the Government ceased the use of tier 1 investment visas, but time and again they have refused to publish the full review. After five years, they released a short statement about the review, but never the review itself. I am sorry to say that this just creates suspicion. This House needs to know to what extent the Government let Kremlin-linked oligarchs treat this country as their playground, and if it is too sensitive for us to see here, and I accept it might well be, release it to the Intelligence and Security Committee, for example. Let it have the transparency it needs, because if the Government have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear.

Finally, I am glad that the Government have finally seen the error of their ways regarding the timeline to proscribe Wagner, but they now must learn this lesson and not wait. In particular, they must not make the same mistake with Iran, and I echo the points made by Members earlier. The Home Secretary will know that 16 September marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of Mahsa Amini in Iran, and time and again across this House we have repeatedly called for the proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran. The Home Secretary has warmed up her proscription muscles, and I would urge her to use them again, perhaps even this week to mark that tragic anniversary.