“I hope that I will be able to visit Stamford Bridge one last time to say goodbye to all of you in person,” Roman Abramovich said in a statement on the Chelsea website on March 2, 2022, when he confirmed his intention to sell the Premier League club after 19 years as its owner.
Eight days later, any short-to-medium-term hopes of this visit were curtailed when the British government announced sanctions had been placed upon Abramovich following the full Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24. The British government now describe Abramovich as a “prominent Russian businessman and pro-Kremlin oligarch”. They say he is associated with Russian president Vladimir Putin and, via his stake in steel and mining group Evraz, they accuse Abramovich of “obtaining a benefit from or supporting the government of Russia by carrying on business in sectors of strategic significance to Russia”.
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His assets in the UK were frozen, he was banned from travelling to the country and it is forbidden for any British citizen or company to do business with him. Within a week, the European Union followed suit.
The sanctions, which had been anticipated from the moment Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, explained Abramovich’s decision to dispose of Chelsea and brought an ignominious end to his reign in English football, during which Chelsea won 31 trophies across their men’s and women’s teams.
Chelsea, as an institution of community value, received a licence to sell up even though Abramovich’s assets were frozen, but the government made this conditional on the funds raised from a sale being directed to the victims of war in Ukraine via a new foundation. Yet almost 14 months since a consortium led by the U.S. private equity firm Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly acquired Chelsea, the £2.5billion ($3.2bn) raised remains in a frozen bank account belonging to Fordstam, which is controlled by Abramovich, due to a dispute between the British government and the independent officials appointed to run the foundation over how and where the money should be spent.
As for Abramovich, a life of globetrotting excess and opulence has been disrupted.
Here was a man whose New Year’s Eve parties, hosted on the Caribbean island of St Barts, became a golden ticket for billionaires, popstars and Hollywood’s cast of famous and infamous. Over the years, his St Barts estate hosted showbiz royalty such as Beyonce, Sir Paul McCartney, Prince, Jay-Z and Kanye West, as well as media baron Rupert Murdoch, the later-disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Guests brought in the New Year with breathtaking firework displays set off from Abramovich’s 162-metre-long yacht Eclipse, which cost $700million (now £541.7m) to be built as the world’s largest superyacht in 2010 (it has since been relegated to No 3, behind yachts owned by the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates and Oman). His mansion in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens, acquired for £90million in 2009, stands on one of the English capital’s most exclusive streets and a short walk from Kensington Palace, which is home to Prince William, the future King of the United Kingdom.
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Now, however, Abramovich’s existence is rather different, although it may be a rather small violin playing for a man who, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, still has an estimated net worth of $7.53billion, albeit down from $19billion in late 2021.
During the past 18 months, Abramovich has found himself exiled from mainland Europe. He is under investigation from prosecutors across several jurisdictions, including the U.S., Canada and Portugal, having been granted citizenship of the Iberian country in April 2021. He has also attracted the most extraordinary headlines as a man who has held in-person meetings with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and, at various times, found himself mediating over peace talks, where a story emerged that he may have been poisoned, as well being on the ground during prisoner-of-war exchanges and present for secret talks to repatriate Ukrainian children that have been taken into Russia.
Here, The Athletic goes inside the fall of the Roman Empire and what happened next.
To many football supporters, Abramovich may be the most famous person whose voice they have never heard. Even in the best of times, he rarely spoke publicly. He appeared often, particularly in the directors’ box at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium. Or he would join the celebrations, as he did at Porto’s Estadio do Dragao stadium in May 2021 when Chelsea beat Manchester City to win the Champions League for the second time. Yet in that period, very few people truly got close to Abramovich. He almost never affords interviews to the media and certainly not ones designed for scrutiny. Thomas Tuchel, his final coach at Chelsea, only met Abramovich for the first time when he won the Champions League six months after being hired. Abramovich declined to comment or respond formally to any questions for this report, while sources close to the Russian spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to not being authorised to speak publicly and owing to the sensitivity of matters discussed.
For a long time, Abramovich’s discretion did not matter to Chelsea supporters, who saw their club spend more than £2billion on player transfers and rack up silverware. Curiosity and questions over the Russian’s finances and alleged links to Putin were mostly confined to investigative journalists, such as Catherine Belton, whose critically acclaimed book Putin’s People: How The KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West became the subject of legal action from Abramovich, and others, in part because it made the unproven claim that he had bought Chelsea at the behest of Putin. In December 2021, Abramovich settled a libel case against publisher HarperCollins in return for the removal or revisions of various allegations and a payment to charity, while the aforementioned claim about Abramovich’s motivations for buying Chelsea would no longer be portrayed as a statement of fact and Abramovich’s explanation for why he bought the club would be included.
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An earlier court ruling by Mrs Justice Tipples noted that “there was no dispute between the parties that the claimant’s relationship with President Putin is a significant one”.
Abramovich’s silence did not even appear to be a major concern for English football when, in 2018, relations between Britain and Russia soured following the poisoning of the former Russian secret agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, which the UK believed to be the responsibility of Russian military intelligence officers.
A few months later, Abramovich withdrew his application to renew his tier-one investment visa in the UK. The British Labour MP Chris Bryant, speaking with parliamentary privilege (which grants legal immunity when speaking to the House of Commons), said last year: “I’ve got hold of a leaked document from 2019, from the Home Office, which says in relation to Mr Abramovich: ‘As part of HMG’s (Her Majesty’s government) Russia strategy aimed at targeting illicit finance and malign activity, Abramovich remains of interest to HMG due to his links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices’.”
The Athletic has not independently verified this report, but multiple people who have worked in the British Home Office say officials previously considered bringing in Abramovich for questioning over his links to Putin and, on one occasion not long after the Skripal poisoning, they were disappointed to learn he had left the country via Luton airport’s private jet terminal. There is no suggestion Abramovich was made aware of the intentions of the Home Office. People close to Abramovich attribute his visa application withdrawal to his frustration over delays and a fear he would become a symbol of British political grandstanding against rich and famous Russians as tensions spiralled with Russia.
A Home Office spokesperson told The Athletic: “We do not routinely comment on individual cases. All applications are considered on their individual merits in line with the Immigration Rules.”
From 2018, Abramovich did not travel to the UK for three years and his only publicised visit came when he joined Israeli president Isaac Herzog in November 2021 as part of his work campaigning against antisemitism. His representatives say he made other less public trips to the UK around this time, but it is unclear when he last visited the country. He was able to travel to London under his Israeli citizenship, granted in 2018 and made possible because citizenship is granted to any Jewish person who wishes to move there.
These days, Abramovich’s life is spent between Sochi, Istanbul and Tel Aviv, while he has also been spotted house-hunting in Dubai, which has become a playground for rich Russians following sanctions from the West. He rarely keeps up with football, perhaps for the best considering Chelsea struggled last season, sacking two managers.
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Since Chelsea was sold, Abramovich has not spoken publicly, but his most official version of how he spends his time can be found in filings made to the U.S. Department of Justice by the law firm Kobre & Kim, who disclosed that they had been enlisted to represent the Russian in June 2022. In the disclosure, his lawyers said they had been hired to provide advice for “judicial and administrative proceedings”, as well as “interface with government agencies”. The filing also ticked a box to confirm that Abramovich is “supervised” and “directed” by a foreign government, foreign political party or foreign principal.
What does this mean? Well, an explanatory note in July 2022 says the supervision refers to how “since February 2022, Mr Abramovich is acting as a mediator in the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, with the goal of finding a diplomatic solution to end the armed conflict. Mr Abramovich is acting in an independent capacity within these negotiations and was approved by both countries to take on the role as a mediator. In addition to his involvement in the negotiations, Mr Abramovich has been heavily involved in advocating for and coordinating the establishment of humanitarian corridors and other humanitarian rescue missions”.
The Russian’s contract with the U.S. law firm said the lawyers who work on this matter would charge $1,450 per hour for their services. Quite whether the firm can actually receive his legal fees may be another matter because the contract also says the company is required to obtain a licence from the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation before they can receive money from the Russian, owing to the measures against Abramovich in the UK. For the six-month reporting period ending April 30, 2023, Kobre & Kim reported they had so far been unable to receive payment. Both the law firm and the British treasury declined to comment as to whether a licence has now been granted.
While football fans obsessed over the fate of Chelsea, Abramovich’s attention was closer to home when Putin began his brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Since then, the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner has recorded more than 25,000 civilian casualties (more than 9,000 deaths and over 16,000 injuries) in Ukraine, while more than six million Ukrainians have been displaced as refugees. The estimation of military deaths is complex and contested, but General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in November 2022 that around 100,000 soldiers on both sides had been killed or injured in the first nine months of the war alone.
When war broke out, Abramovich had been on the French Riviera, where he owns Chateau de la Croe, a 19-acre residence previously leased by English royalty in the 1930s and where the former British prime minister Winston Churchill celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary in 1948. Sources close to Abramovich claim he was one of more than 100 prominent people contacted by Ukrainians as President Zelenksy’s government sought to deter Putin’s invasion. Official contacts between the two countries had been cut off and well-connected go-betweens were required. Abramovich’s contacts are wide and extensive, owing to his investment in the independent art scene in eastern Europe as well as his strong ties to the Jewish community. He has donated more than $500million to Jewish causes around the world in the past 15 years, according to his lawyers, but Abramovich did not publicly speak out when Putin claimed to be “denazifying” Ukraine. The Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Rodnyansky, whose son advised Zelensky, told the Financial Times: “The Ukrainians had been trying to find someone in Russia who could help in finding a peaceful solution. They reached out for help and Roman is the person who decided to help and mobilise support for a peaceful resolution.”
Abramovich, whose representatives had spent so many years denying he had any privileged access to Putin, secured a meeting with the Russian president, which culminated in Abramovich being granted a role as mediator in peace talks, according to the independent Russian news website Proekt.
Abramovich’s only formal political role in Russia was as governor of Chukotka for an eight-year period until 2008.
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David Lingelbach, formerly head of Bank of America’s Russian operations in Moscow and now a professor at the University of Baltimore, tells The Athletic: “There’s this famous period in Abramovich’s career where he is the governor of Chukotka, out in the Russian Far East, and he basically said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go out there and be the governor’. And he lived there and he dumped a fair bit of his then fortune into helping the people there. And all of that was, in my view, a way to demonstrate to Putin that he was a person who was willing to do whatever it took to demonstrate fealty and loyalty, which I think is probably one of Putin’s higher values.
“I don’t know any one of the other oligarchs who was willing to make that kind of a sacrifice. Siberia is a world unto its own. And to make a choice, to go to a place like Chukotka that even a lot of Russians couldn’t place on a map and work there for some period of time was quite extraordinary. And it was acknowledged. It bought him a lot of running room with Putin and he has since diversified his holdings, by moving his base of operations first to London and perhaps now Istanbul.”
Abramovich appears to maintain the trust of Putin, but The Wall Street Journal also reported that President Zelensky requested that US President Joe Biden should not follow the lead of Britain, the EU and Canada by imposing sanctions on Abramovich, as the Russian appeared to have a degree of trust, or use, within Ukrainian diplomatic circles. The Ukrainian government declined to comment when approached by The Athletic, which sources in diplomatic circles attributed to the ongoing sensitivity of Abramovich’s role.
David Arakhamia, Ukraine’s lead negotiator when the war began, described Abramovich’s contribution as “helpful”, saying it was a way to receive informal opinions on matters important to Russia during negotiations. Yet not everybody was convinced. Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, told the BBC he had “no idea what Mr Abramovich is claiming or doing” at the meetings.
The happenings around Abramovich became stranger. During the first week of the war, he was present during negotiations in Belarus. Then, in early March, the Sunday Times claimed he had become a diplomatic postman, hand-delivering a “handwritten letter” from Zelensky to Putin in which the Ukrainian president set out his conditions for a peace agreement. The newspaper claimed Putin responded by saying: “Tell him I will thrash them.”
The most startling episode came when the Wall Street Journal and Bellingcat claimed Abramovich was among three people present at peace talks at the Ukraine-Belarus border who suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning by an “undefined chemical weapon”. Abramovich reportedly experienced sore eyes and peeling skin, with a New York Times report claiming he asked a scientist who examined him: “Are we dying?”
An anonymous U.S. official later told Reuters that the symptoms may have been due to “environmental” factors rather than poisoning, while Ihor Zhovkva, an official in the Ukrainian president’s office, told the BBC that the two Ukrainians who had been reported to be poisoned were “fine”. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian Kremlin, said the reports were part of an “information war”.
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Abramovich’s purported brush with mortality did not end his mediation role. In the final week of March, he was photographed in a blue suit at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey hosted a summit of diplomats aimed at securing a ceasefire. Ibrahim Kalin, the official representative of President Erdogan, described Abramovich, who sat at the front of the observers, as “someone who was appointed by Putin as a negotiator.” Kremlin spokesman Peskov went softer. He said: “Abramovich is involved in ensuring certain contacts between the Russian and Ukrainian sides and he is not an official member of the delegation. You know that our delegation is headed by presidential aide (Vladimir) Medinsky, but nevertheless, from our side, he (Abramovich) is present at the negotiating table.”
In the case of Abramovich, his presence attracted curiosity and cynicism. One former British foreign office official, speaking anonymously due to the terms of his exit, told The Athletic that Abramovich may have been “riding two horses”, on the one hand seeking to improve his image in the West, while Putin, who mostly surrounds himself with parochial FSB or former KGB personnel, may have appreciated the global perspective and insight of a commercial figure such as Abramovich.
Peace talks in March last year failed but, according to his lawyer’s filings, Abramovich still considers himself to be mediating. Last summer, he became involved in the exchange of 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war in return for 55 Russians, as well as a group of foreign nationals from the U.S., Britain, Croatia, Sweden and Morocco. Sources close to Abramovich say he was present at meetings involving the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, with the Saudi state instrumental in negotiating the exchange. There were four different sites where prisoners were exchanged, but Abramovich was present at Rostov-on-Don airport, where several British prisoners were released. Aiden Aslin, one of the Brits released, wrote in the Daily Mail newspaper how, upon boarding the plane, another of the captives recognised a familiar man.
“You don’t half look like Roman Abramovich,” said Shaun Pinner, one of those released.
“I am Roman Abramovich,” the man replied.
Over time, elements of this story have been glamourised, with suggestions Abramovich provided iPhones to the men to call their families and served steak to the released prisoners. Sources both close to Abramovich and the Saudi government say the Saudis organised the plane, the food and all services on board, while Abramovich was present.
Aslin said he was grateful to Abramovich for his role in the release, but added that his “gratitude to Abramovich and the Saudi prince has its limits.” He said: To me, they are knights in dark satin, playing a game with the Kremlin for their own purposes.”
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Abramovich has also been involved in mediation efforts to agree deals to secure grain out of Ukraine and ammonia out of Russia, while the Financial Times claimed last week that the oligarch has been privy to conversations with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to repatriate Ukrainian children taken into Russia during the war. In March, the international criminal court in The Hague indicted Putin and the Russian children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children, meaning an international arrest warrant is now out for Putin.
Lingelbach, who worked closely with Putin in the 1990s when running Bank of America’s operations, says Putin may stand to benefit from Abramovich’s involvement, with the return of some of the children perhaps helping his case should he be tried for war crimes even in absentia. Lingelbach says: “I think he’s trying to keep the channels open to keep his options open and Abramovich is part of that process.”
For many years, Abramovich has carefully choreographed a reputation as a philanthropist, which is emphasised by the filings made by his own lawyers to the U.S. Department of Justice.
His lawyers say Abramovich is the chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, a trustee of the Moscow Jewish Museum and in 2018 he received an award from the Federation of Jewish Communities to commend the contribution of more than $500million he had donated to Jewish causes. In March 2022, as the war began, this appeared to secure Abramovich some allies in Israel. The Washington Post reported how Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote to the U.S. ambassador for Israel to discourage sanctions against Abramovich.
The letter described Abramovich as the museum’s second-largest private donor and played down suggestions Abramovich had links to Putin. On February 22, 2022, two days before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Yad Vashem had announced a new long-term strategic partnership with Abramovich and the museum spokesman Simmy Allen described it as an eight-figure donation. Within three weeks, following British sanctions against Abramovich, Yad Vashem had suspended its partnership with Abramovich.
Abramovich maintains Israeli citizenship, yet the Portuguese government is carrying out an inquiry into the process that led to Abramovich securing citizenship under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews previously expelled from the country. The Portuguese government did not respond to an email requesting an update on the status of the inquiry and neither did lawyers representing Abramovich.
In the U.S., Abramovich has still not been sanctioned, but he appointed lawyers on June 15, 2022, nine days after a federal judge in New York authorised the U.S. government to seize two private jets that a 14-page sworn affidavit by FBI special agent Alan Fowler concluded were owned by the Russian. The prosecutor alleged that two of Abramovich’s planes flew to Russia in March 2022 in violation of export restrictions the U.S. had imposed following the Russian invasion. This included a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, acquired for $93.6m in 2017 by a shell company the FBI say was owned by Abramovich, which has since been re-designed to increase its value to $350m.
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Fowler also stated his belief that in or about February 2022, “Abramovich reorganised the ownership of his assets, including by making his children (all of whom are Russian nationals) the beneficiaries” of an offshore trust in Cyprus, which he claimed sat at the top of a structure of shell companies that ultimately owned the planes. Abramovich has four daughters and three sons.
The Guardian further alleged in January this year that the reorganisation of Abramovich’s affairs started in 10 separate trusts in the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion, while in April, the British government placed sanctions on Demetris Ioannides, who they said “is responsible for crafting the murky offshore structures which Abramovich used to hide over £760million of assets ahead of being sanctioned following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine”.
Sources close to Abramovich argue that some of the reorganisation can be explained by banks approaching Abramovich in the months leading up to the invasion in response to media coverage that reported heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine. They claim banks wanted loans to be repaid to mitigate the impact of any possible changes to their client’s assets or ability to release funds.
Lingelbach, formerly of Bank of America in Moscow, says this would be logical: “I don’t have the granular knowledge about the run-up to the 2022 invasion, but when I was working in Russia in the ’90s, we had the 1998 Russian financial crisis and we observed exactly the same thing. We as a foreign bank knew something pretty bad was going to happen, so we were already reducing our exposures. The banks would have been saying, ‘We need to settle before you become illiquid’. I noticed also that Abramovich had started doing some stuff. I’m surprised more of the oligarchs weren’t more strategic in that regard.”
Abramovich is also under threat in Jersey, where authorities have frozen $7billion worth of assets, although local police apologised and paid damages for unlawful searches of his property.
The Canadian ministry of foreign affairs announced in December that Canada will start the process to seize and pursue the forfeiture of $26million from Granite Capital Holdings Ltd, a company owned by Abramovich, and seek to use the funds generated to help reconstruct Ukraine.
A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told The Athletic: “Restraint of these assets does not change the ownership. It is a first step in a legal process. The Government of Canada continues to carefully consider next steps towards potentially applying to Canadian courts for forfeiture. Numerous procedural fairness steps for the owner and any affected third parties are included in the asset seizure and forfeiture regime and associated court proceedings.”
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Last May, Abramovich challenged the sanctions imposed by the European Union and this month his lawyers appeared at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to argue that the sanctions were based more on fame than “on evidence”. They argued that he has been an “upstanding citizen”, with lawyer Thierry Bontinck adding: “Celebrity is a double-edged sword. Ask yourself this question: When the war started, did this very famous Russian have a chance of avoiding the restrictive measures? The answer is no. Even though he had lived, worked and invested in the West for more than 20 years.”
In the event of a victory, Abramovich is requesting the sanctions be overturned and that the European Union Council, by way of damages, makes a payment of €1million for the “foundation for victims of conflicts which is being established in connection with the sale of Chelsea FC”.
Making such a donation, however, may not be straightforward. This is because, over a year after the sale of Chelsea went through, a foundation is still to actually be established. The reasons for the delay centre on disagreements between the British government and the independent officials appointed to run the foundation, such as Mike Penrose, a former director of UNICEF, over where and how the vast funds should be spent. As of now, the money remains frozen in a bank account controlled by Abramovich and no bank account has been set up for the foundation.
The dispute rests on the British government’s original insistence, underpinned by a deed of undertaking, that any money raised from the sale should not benefit Abramovich and should be spent within Ukraine. This means there is now confusion and misalignment over whether the funds must be spent within the borders of Ukraine itself or whether it could be spent, for example, to assist the millions of displaced refugees or, for example, in countries that have been disproportionately impacted by shortages that have come about due to a shortage of Ukraine grain. The wording of Abramovich’s claim to the EU, referring to a “foundation for victims of conflicts” is non-specific to Ukraine, but the British government’s unilateral statement in May 2022 could not have been clearer.
It stated that the proceeds should be used “for exclusively humanitarian purposes in Ukraine” and warned that it will not “issue a licence which enables any part of the proceeds from a sale to be used in a way which would directly or indirectly benefit Roman Abramovich or any other designated person”. The statement added that the Portuguese government and the European Commission must also agree to any proposal and the destination of the proceeds. An official who has worked in Downing Street over the past year told The Athletic he had been given the impression that Whitehall officials would have no qualms about this money being frozen for years until they are convinced Russians would not unintentionally benefit in some way, while Penrose, speaking to the New York Times in June, said he had still not held any meetings with British government ministers.
In a statement to The Athletic, a spokesman for the British foreign office said: “We’ve been clear since the sale of Chelsea FC went through that we’d only issue a licence that ensures the proceeds are specifically used for humanitarian purposes in Ukraine.”
The spokesman added that they “remain open to any arrangement that clearly delivers in line with these conditions”.
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Lingelbach, who used to hold frequent meetings with Putin during his time as a banker in Moscow, says: “Putin must be chuckling about it because he will just see this as another demonstration of the utter ineffectiveness of the West, arguing for a year now since the club was sold. So there’s all this money sitting in Abramovich’s bank account that they cannot use. And the West, the UK government, it seems, is basically saying it has to actually go into Ukraine. But there are all of these Ukrainian refugees in Poland, for example. The UK government is right to insist there be controls in place to ensure the money does not end up in Russia’s hands. That’s a totally legitimate thing. But my response would be to these guys to get on with it.”
As with everything related to Abramovich, it appears complex. While he treads a fine line with Putin, his openness to the West yielded criticism from Russian officials who are even more hardline than Putin. In December, the Grey Zone Telegram channel, which is aligned to the Wagner group (a Russian paramilitary organisation), criticised Abramovich for appearing to receive sanctions relief while assisting the release of Ukrainian prisoners. Abramovich was out of Russia and photographed in Israel when the Wagner group, spearheaded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, briefly threatened to advance on Moscow in late June.
Abramovich has not spoken about this. Once again, the world is left to watch on, always second-guessing his next move and the motivation behind it.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)
