Chelsea FC received Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge last Wednesday on their way to a new Champions League final and surrounded by exceptional circumstances since the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army began on February 20. Roman Abramovich, owner of the English club, knew that his links with Putin could bring him problems and tried to avoid any incidence on the club by giving up his control to the Chelsea foundation and, later, announcing that he was putting his shares up for sale. Even so, the sanctions by the Boris Johnson government arrived and since then the London team has been prohibited from signing players, as well as selling or renewing those they already have on the squad. He also cannot sell match tickets and is allowed a maximum spend of £20,000 for away travel. A very low figure if we take into account that, for Champions League matches, the total cost can be around double that amount.
In the 1990s, Abramovich used his contacts close to Yeltsin to amass his fortune. But then the Russian oligarchs were welcome all over Europe and no one seemed to care where his money had come from or what his links to political power were.
Actually, the relationship between Abramovich and the Kremlin goes back a long way. In fact, already in the 1990s he used his contacts close to Yeltsin to amass his fortune. But then the Russian oligarchs were welcome throughout Europe and no one seemed to care where their money had come from or what their links to political power were.
Those questions were asked in the UK in 2003, when Abramovich bought Chelsea for around £200m. If they had, they would have known that in 1992, when he was an oil businessman, he was linked to the robbery of a diesel train. They would also have known about the accusations of bribery and fraud after in 1995 his association with the businessman Boris Berezovsky provided him with the political support to emerge victorious in the auction for the publicly owned oil company Sibneft, a company that he bought for approximately 250 million dollars. and that he sold back to the Russian State, ten years later, for 1,300 million. And they would also have known that the investigation reports related to that purchase were sent from the courts directly to the Kremlin, where they were placed in a safe place. Yes, it would not have cost them too much to know all this. After all, since the invasion of Ukraine, the BBC hasn’t needed to ask much to report all these facts. And it was Abramovich himself who acknowledged in the British courts that he had made these payments when he had to testify, in 2011, about Berezovsky’s complaint.
The truth is that both the Premier League and the UK government itself looked the other way on numerous occasions. They did it in 2003, when Abramovich acquired ownership of Chelsea. At that time, the London club was one rung below those who were the two great dominators of English football, Arsenal and Manchester United. And it was thanks to Abramovich’s money that footballers of the stature of Hernán Crespo, the ‘Witch’ Verón or Makelele arrived. A year later Drogba, Robben, Carvalho or Peter Cech would arrive. In a very short time, Chelsea became one of the most powerful teams in the Premier League and Europe, Champions League finalists in 2008 and winners in 2012 and again last season.
2003 would also have been a good time for the Premier League to ask how so much money coming in from a non-football source could affect the competition.
2003 would also have been a good time for the Premier League to wonder how so much money coming in from a non-football source could affect the competition, or for Tony Blair’s Labor government to investigate the origin of Abramovich’s fortune. However, it was Arsenal’s coach, Frenchman Arsene Wenger, who most insistently denounced the adulteration of the competition caused by Chelsea’s infinite budget. UEFA tried to limit this type of practice with the implementation in 2010 of the Financial Fair Play, although it has not been able to stop the inflation of the transfer market caused by the injection of money from millionaire owners or from the so-called “clubs-State”.
The British government, on the other hand, launched the Investor Visa program in 2008, whereby anyone who agreed to invest in the United Kingdom, first one million pounds, which was later expanded to two million, had access to a special residence permit, which, within a few years, could become permanent, if the investments were sufficient. Abramovich was one of the beneficiaries of this program and, at that time, the British authorities did not want to ask about the origin of his fortune. Nor did they ask about the more than 2,500 Russians who were approved for this “golden visa” in the 14 years that the program has been in force. In 2020, a report by the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee warned of the risk of Russian influence in the City of London and of what was already beginning to be known as Londongrado or Moscow on Thames, but nobody seemed to worry. In fact, this “golden visa” program has been available until last February, when the invasion of Ukraine was already imminent.
Abramovich decided to move his residence to Israel in 2018, after the poisoning of the Russian agent Serguei Skripal and his daughter took place in London.
This change, however, has not affected Abramovich, who decided to move his residence to Israel in 2018, after the poisoning of the Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter occurred in London. There he feared that his links with Putin could put him in danger, although in the end no action was taken against the businessman, beyond the non-renewal of the visa. He was unable to be present at Wembley on the day his team beat Manchester United in the FA Cup final thanks to a Hazard goal, but ownership of the club was not at risk. Abramovich limited himself to exchanging the cold of London for the beaches of Tel Aviv.
Since the start of the Ukraine invasion, things have changed in the UK. Russia has become a danger to all of Europe and any link with Putin is being scrutinized. Abramovich announced that the benefits obtained from the sale of Chelsea will go to all the victims of the war and has been present as an intermediary in the peace negotiations. There he denounced an attempted poisoning, of which both Ukrainian agents and the toughest sector of the Kremlin have been accused. As he tries to win the trust of the Western world, he is no longer overlooking his eight years as governor of the Chukotka region, heading Putin’s party. Nor did he buy it in 2002 from the oil company Slavneft, in which he benefited from the withdrawal of the bid from another rival company, of Chinese origin, when his representative was kidnapped upon arrival in Moscow.
At Stamford Bridge, chants continue to be heard in favor of Abramovich from a fan that has not forgotten the 19 titles they have won since his arrival; in the stadium the banner that defines Chelsea as “The Roman Empire” continues to be displayed, but its future in the United Kingdom is becoming more complicated and the same actions that allowed it to amass a fortune with which to land in the Premier with hype and saucer now close all doors on him and make him an unwelcome guest.
–
