LONDON, March 11, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Britain said Friday it could seize an

exclusive London flat bought for cash by a woman connected to Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov, under a new sanctions regime coming into force next
week.

The government stepped up asset freezes and travel bans on prominent
Russians, the latest being 386 members of parliament who supported President
Vladimir Putin's devastating invasion of Ukraine.

But the Economic Crime Bill -- which is being accelerated into law after
Russia's invasion -- will lower the bar for the government to slap
"unexplained wealth orders" on people with no discernible valid income.

The government said those could include Polina Kovaleva, 26, the daughter of
Svetlana Polyakova, who is reportedly Lavrov's long-time mistress.

Along with Putin, Lavrov has been personally sanctioned by Britain.
Opposition Labour MP Chris Bryant has said Kovaleva and Polyakova should be
added to the list.

The UK's land registry database lists Kovaleva as the owner of a œ4.4 million
($5.75 million, 5.24 million euro) apartment in the plush London area of
Kensington, bought mortgage-free in 2016.

The flat lies not far from the Kensington mansion of Chelsea Football Club
owner Roman Abramovich, whose UK assets have been frozen over his ties to
Putin.

Maria Pevchikh, an investigator for jailed dissident Alexei Navalny's anti-
corruption foundation, said Kovaleva's "only source of money is her
unemployed mother who happens to be Lavrov's informal wife".

"This is the textbook example of unexplained wealth. The property can be
legally seized right now," Pevchikh tweeted.

Speaking to LBC radio, technology minister Chris Philp said the new bill
would strengthen government investigators' ability to impose orders demanding
that asset owners explain the source of their money.

"So people who show up in London, a bit like the case you mentioned -- buying
a œ4 million property with apparently no legitimate means to do so -- those
unexplained wealth orders are designed to get behind that."

Then, Philp said, the government could "potentially confiscate assets that
have been acquired like expensive property, where there's no good explanation
for where that money came from".

Philp also defended the pace of the government's action Thursday against
Abramovich, after Labour and some MPs from the ruling Conservative party had
demanded much earlier sanctions against the Chelsea owner.

"These Russian oligarchs have very expensive lawyers. They're highly
litigious," the minister said.

"It was very important to make sure this was done in a way that was totally
legally watertight and legally defensible."

In Washington on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Western allies
needed to do more -- including freezing all Russian banking assets and
excluding Moscow entirely from the SWIFT payments system.

Britain and the United States have meanwhile been warning that Russia could
be preparing to stage a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, under the guise
of a "false flag" operation that blames Washington and Kyiv.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said Russia would be hit with a
"robust" response in the event of a chemical attack.