I’ve heard so much about you, said the man. “Yeah,” Mae West replied. “But you can’t prove it.”
If you want to understand why it has taken 19 years for Roman Abramovich’s reckoning to arrive, that joke is a good place to start. It also hints how the Premier League can avoid getting in a similar mess again.
Abramovich is the symbol of Russian money in London. But critics can’t pin wrongdoing on him. As he attempts to sell Chelsea football club, he is not on the US, UK or EU sanctions lists, even as many politicians would love him to be.
His $13.5bn fortune stems from the 1990s, when he was close to Boris Yeltsin and Boris Berezovsky as they carved up Russia’s resources. Berezovsky later said that Abramovich had forced him to sell a stake in an oil company by threatening to use the Russian state against him. Abramovich argued he had merely paid $2bn for political patronage. He won the court case in 2012, being judged a credible witness. “I am not convinced that the Court has been presented with the full picture of the business arrangements between [Berezovsky, Abramovich and another man]. But that is irrelevant,” said the judge.
Abramovich was accused of giving Vladimir Putin a yacht; he denied it and won apologies from newspapers. When a Swiss police report said his fortune was “at least partially of illegal origin”, his lawyers cleared his name. He has no criminal convictions.
His position at Chelsea has been untenable ever since his UK visa renewal was delayed in 2018. But his exit won’t end the Premier League’s headaches. He set a precedent. His billions transformed Chelsea and made other fans dream of such a windfall. The league allowed in owners such as Birmingham’s Carson Yeung (later jailed for money-laundering) and Portsmouth’s Vladimir Antonov (for embezzlement). After the invasion of Ukraine, Everton has had to suspend sponsorship deals with the companies of Alisher Usmanov, a Russian billionaire placed under sanctions by the EU and the UK.
The league’s rules don’t allow owners or directors who have been jailed for a year or have a conviction for any act involving dishonesty. People can also be banned if the league’s board decides they committed such an offence outside the UK. But these rules place the burden of investigation on the league and they don’t stop autocratic regimes. Maybe Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman couldn’t buy Newcastle United, but the sovereign wealth fund that he controls did; some fans dressed up in Arab-style clothes to celebrate. Manchester City is owned by Sheikh Mansour, deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. Who is confident that these links won’t become untenable one day?
For now, there is a growing gap between the social conscience of the players and the silence of the owners. Abramovich has issued two statements this week; neither included the words “Putin”, “Russia” or “invasion”. That seems odd from someone who marked donations to Holocaust causes last month with a reference to what can happen “if we don’t speak out”.
The Premier League needs to grapple with people using its brand to wash their own. It is successful enough to limit high-risk owners and attract decent ones. Hansjörg Wyss, a medical devices billionaire who has pledged $1.2bn to nature conservation, is interested in Chelsea (Please, Hansjörg, save the forests instead). Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe’s industrial group, has branched into sport.
The league is considering a human rights clause for owners; it also wants to control player salaries, which might attract more investors. Good. Fans should put values before trophies. But perhaps the best solution is for the British state to strengthen its investigative capacity, so that bad actors are deterred and doubts do not linger.
henry.mance@ft.com
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