There are crooks. And then there are spooks. In Britain, we pretty much think of these as being two different things. In Russia? Not so much.

It is the slow, painful and tragic capture of the Russian state and its security apparatus by gangsters that explains some of the financial sanctions being proposed after the Salisbury poisonings.

So UK politicians have come up with a variety of schemes to crack down on dirty money, because that hurts regime favourites. But it also hurts the regime.

It is a relatively safe bet that some of the money-laundering pipelines out of the former Soviet Union are used by both people robbing the Russian state and the Russian state itself.

That is because Britain’s main contribution to money-laundering is our corporate system. We provide companies with secret owners. And such anonymity vehicles – devised for tax cheats – are also ideal for crooks and spooks.

Take Scotland. For some years this country has been providing secret firms in the same way Switzerland used to provide secret bank accounts. Unregulated company formation agents, accountants and even blue chip law firms have been churning off-the-shelf secrecy vehicles, such as the now infamous Scottish limited partnerships (SLPs).

The Herald has been highlighting the industrial-scale abuse of these firms for three years. Politicians of all parties have called for their reform, with MP Roger Mullin and then his colleague Alison Thewliss leading a campaign in Westminster. They have allies among Conservatives. Security minister Ben Wallace, a former MSP, back in 2016 said “intelligence assessments from law enforcement” on the abuse of SLPs were “very concerning”.

SLPs – and other Scottish and UK shell firms – played a key role in the $20 billion Russian Laundromat. It is widely thought some of this money is state-linked.

But SLPs have also been flagged up in Ukraine as potential vehicles for security agencies from Russia. These include those fronting for unregulated peer-to-peer money transfer systems. Such entities have an obvious use for underground activity, whether by a state or by a crime group or by individuals for whom that distinction is not meaningful.

The Conservatives have been pledging reforms of SLPs for some time. The Salisbury tragedy may speed them up.