I know this is anecdotal but I remember anywhere you went in financial or political circles in 1990s London, everyone was falling over themselves about the nouveau riche from Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries investing. There were some who said it would drive up real estate prices and some upset about lack of oversight but they were looked at in the media and by politicians as kooky or close to it. Decades later - the Panama Papers, the Epstein files and articles like this and from that journalist killed in Malta exposing corruption.

Mind-boggling what people and corporations knew and did in the shadows while we cheered on and cheer on their holdings.

who cheered on exactly?

It took enormously corrupted and murderous personality to be nouveau riche from Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries during the 1990s. With links to former USSR security and intelligence agencies on top of it. People in most of these regions back then were eating mud pies.