Too good for kleptocrats

In 2007 Mikhael Gorbachev starred in a Louis Vuitton advert. He was driven past the Berlin Wall with Louis Vuitton luggage and the photograph was printed in Vanity Fair. It was baffling and reassuring, but nothing lasts forever.

A few years ago I went on the Kleptocracy Bus Tour. It is run by a man called Roman Borisovich and it tours London — and sometimes Oxford —identifying kleptocratic crimes, feuds, housing, anxieties and behaviours. During a recent tour, a neighbour of Andrey Guryev, the fertiliser magnate who bought Witanhurst in Highgate, testified that a voice from a security box had asked him to stop strimming his own hedge. Of course, I looked for kleptocratic restaurants from the tour bus — for Novikov (Asian and Italian), for Rivea at the Bulgari Hotel (Italian), for Mari Vanna (Russian), for Rextail (meat). But Borisovich did not mention them and I did not blame him.