Letter from the UK by Sam Night @ NewYorker.com, May 26

[...] (Roman) Abramovich’s visa expired a few weeks ago, and the British government is not rushing its renewal. His personal Boeing 767 was last seen in London on April 1st.

Abramovich is Britain’s thirteenth-richest man. Since he bought Chelsea—a purchase that made him a household name—Abramovich, more than any other Russian billionaire, has personified to the British public what oligarchs do and are. They buy soccer teams. They buy art. They get divorced. They are absentee governors of remote parts of Siberia. Their fortunes rise and fall according to their relationships with Vladimir Putin. They buy expensive London townhouses and dig out huge subterranean extensions.  (Abramovich’s house in Kensington, which he bought from the Russian Embassy, reportedly cost ninety million pounds.) They die sudden, unexplained deaths. If the U.K. has decided it is no longer willing to take Abramovich’s money or—at the very least—to help him transform it from one asset class into another, this is quite a departure. (The government has refused to comment on the case.) [.....]