The former owner of the Chelsea club, Roman Abramovich, refuses to sign an agreement on the transfer of funds received from the sale of the Chelsea club to Ukraine. According to the Daily Mail, the businessman wants to transfer part of the money to affected citizens from Russia.
In turn, the British authorities and the European Commission oppose this decision. The British Foreign Office expressed hope that the money would be transferred to Ukraine before winter.
In the comments to the article, British readers are skeptical about the actions of their own government and rather support Abramovich’s decision, pointing out that the money will never reach Ukraine and “will end up in the pockets of officials and in Panamanian offshores.” Some are perplexed, what does Ukraine have to do with the English club. Someone is proposing to return Chelsea to Abramovich.
Andrey Kulikov, CEO of research company Europe insight, comments:
“As far as I remember the beginning of this story, in fact, when the deal for the sale of the Chelsea football club was completed, it was already discussed that these funds should go to Ukraine, and this seemed to be taken for granted. The fact that now, after all, there should be a clarification that when it was said about the victims of the conflict, not only Ukraine and Russia were meant, this is an interesting point, in my opinion. Personally, I have a question whether any documents were drawn up in connection with this, which suggested where and under what conditions the money would be transferred. Because there was not quite such a voluntary sale, and the conditions were set by the British government that in no case should this money go to Roman Abramovich. And I do not quite understand why the UK and the European Commission are so principled in this matter. It seems to me that the way out could be to send them to some international organization, such as the Red Cross. Perhaps this option is being considered, but it may not suit the UK government and the European Union. Returning to your question, what could be the reaction, perhaps it will be about new sanctions against Roman Abramovich, he will be prevented from owning some other assets, not necessarily in the UK. A fairly wide, including geographical, bargaining is possible here, but this will already be a reaction, which means that one way or another the issue has been resolved, but it seems to me that such a reaction will not come and the parties will still agree on how to manage the money. .
In March 2022, Abramovich came under British sanctions, and in May the English Premier League approved the sale of the Chelsea club to a consortium of American businessman Todd Beley. According to the terms of the license of the UK government, the money from the sale of the club should be transferred to help Ukrainian refugees. The media wrote that the size of the fund will be 2.34 billion pounds.