Following Jacques Attali’s weekly L’Express column titled “When Can We Expect the London Papers?”, on April 17 Le Monde also went gunning for the City of London in a full-page story titled “Offshore Havens, the Jewels of the British Empire.”

Led off with the kicker,

this article goes in detail to explain that the City is the result of “feudal” and “imperial” legacies. The whole picture is completed by close-ups of the British Overseas Territories serving as tax havens; territories under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom — Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar, Anguilla and Montserrat islands. And, some of the Crown Dependencies which belong directly to the British Crown, are not part of the United Kingdom, or the EU; such as The Isle of Man, and The Channel Islands (Guernsey & Jersey).

The page is spiced up with detailed information: How “since the Middle Ages,” the City has had a specific status obtained from King John Lackland, granting it autonomy and a favorable tax law; how the ideal tools for tax evasion, the “trusts,” go back to “the times of the Crusades,” when those leaving for the Orient entrusted their wealth to a “trusted” third-party manager; and how under the Empire, the British or foreign companies based in Britain were given “non-resident” fiscal status, which granted the leaders of companies based outside of Britain an exemption from taxes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama spoke by phone, Monday, at the initiation of the US side, according to the Kremlin, to discuss Syria and Ukraine. Putin “stressed the need for the moderate opposition to distance themselves swiftly from ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and to close Syria’s border with Turkey, from where fighters and arms supplies for the extremists make their way in,” according to the Kremlin readout. “The two presidents agreed to continue building up their coordination on Syria, including through their intelligence services and defense ministries. For this purpose, additional measures will be put in place for rapid response to violations of the ceasefire.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in remarks to reporters, Monday, that echoed Putin’s statements to Obama, noted that so-called moderate rebel groups that signed onto the Russia-US brokered cease fire have not removed themselves from proximity to areas controlled by Jabhat al Nusra. According to a lengthy report in RT, Lavrov blamed the US for failing to exert influence on the opposition and questioned its claims of being moderate.

Washington officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, agreed with Moscow’s stance, “that if these groups want to fulfill the conditions of the ceasefire and don’t want to look like terrorist supporters, they must do a simple thing — change their dislocation area and physically separate themselves from the terrorists,” Lavrov said. He added that the US has repeatedly promised Russia to exert its influence on moderate opposition, but the minister said that “those promises are still not fulfilled.”

“If this moderate opposition doesn’t want to leave the areas occupied by Al-Nusra, maybe it is not moderate? Maybe they are just those, who cooperate with Al-Nusra despite the UN Security Council resolution?” he asked. Both Al Nusra and ISIS, Lavrov stressed, are trying to improve their positions in Aleppo. “They are, I stress once again, a legitimate target for those, fighting against terrorism in Syria,” he said.