Roman Abramovich Thread

[Norfolkblue1961 52]

16 hours ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

I agree that we should not politicise this. The way the government handled this was a self-serving, pointless, stupid, inconsistent piece of pathetic PR but in my view Labour would have done the same had they been in power. I'd like to think it would have been less stupid if Dorries wasn't involved but that might just be over optimistic thinking on my part. 

Nadine is indeed an empty shell with no brain

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

16 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

For me the sanctions aren't the biggest issue (although the reasoning behind them is so wishy washy)

To be specific in my case it is that all we ever saw were assertions the Roman was guilty of 'something'. Never a description of what that something was and not a shred of evidence offered to support the assertions. I have never claimed that the assertions were inaccurate, because I simply don't know, but I complain that they are unsupported. Reeks of PR. Tell you something is bad and tell you not to like it but never allow you to see what it is and what makes it bad. Contrast that with Bill Browder's two books in which he exposes the shady world of dirty Russian money. He lays it all out; this illegal thing happened that generated criminal income, it was laundered like this, and this, then this and finally passed to some Cellist in St. Petersburg and here's the evidence that he's holding the money for Putin. Clear, proper, cases.  What Dorries and her underlings produced is just propaganda to make them look active and distract from how useless the government is on almost every front.

 

16 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

the way they were imposed which has felt an almost direct attack on the club and the fans

Nothing almost about it. The express intention of the 'special licence' was not to hurt the club and its fans but it, and we, are the only entities which have been hurt by it. If I bump into Dorries, Huddleston or Bryant any time in the next few years I might end up getting arrested. One day my anger about this will die down, but not this day.

 

16 hours ago, Superblue_1986 said:

the thinly veiled threats, through media outlets and in some cases direct quotes, regarding the future existence of the club.

Just waffle aimed at pleasing an audience which they know consists of non-Chelsea football fans who mostly hate CFC and people who are detached and won't examine any of the governments claims. It was never going to come to that but it sounded good to their target audience.

[Superblue 6,331]

5 minutes ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

To be specific in my case it is that all we ever saw were assertions the Roman was guilty of 'something'. Never a description of what that something was and not a shred of evidence offered to support the assertions. I have never claimed that the assertions were inaccurate, because I simply don't know, but I complain that they are unsupported. Reeks of PR. Tell you something is bad and tell you not to like it but never allow you to see what it is and what makes it bad. Contrast that with Bill Browder's two books in which he exposes the shady world of dirty Russian money. He lays it all out; this illegal thing happened that generated criminal income, it was laundered like this, and this, then this and finally passed to some Cellist in St. Petersburg and here's the evidence that he's holding the money for Putin. Clear, proper, cases.  What Dorries and her underlings produced is just propaganda to make them look active and distract from how useless the government is on almost every front.

 

Nothing almost about it. The express intention of the 'special licence' was not to hurt the club and its fans but it, and we, are the only entities which have been hurt by it. If I bump into Dorries, Huddleston or Bryant any time in the next few years I might end up getting arrested. One day my anger about this will die down, but not this day.

 

Just waffle aimed at pleasing an audience which they know consists of non-Chelsea football fans who mostly hate CFC and people who are detached and won't examine any of the governments claims. It was never going to come to that but it sounded good to their target audience.

The biggest gripe I have is the limiting effect the sanctions have had on the club during this period and how much of a blind eye the government have taken to this both from a sporting integrity perspective and the effect the situation has had on a number of employees and stakeholders who rely on the club for their living.

How hard could it really have been to have an independent regulator working alongside the club to verify where money is coming in and going out to ensure it doesn't "fund the war" but carries on allowing the club to continue as normal as possible with full stadiums, megastore and hotel being open and available, etc.

No one would have batted an eyelid if we were given the ability to continue as normal in that way.

In my opinion it's been a thoroughly embarrassing episode from the government which won't get the real attention it's deserved because we're not media darlings and in general a disliked club around England through jealousy.

[Superblue 6,331]

He's reportedly filed a lawsuit against the EU for the sanctions placed on him.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

24 minutes ago, Superblue_1986 said:

He's reportedly filed a lawsuit against the EU for the sanctions placed on him.

Good. At the beginning there was a claim that he would be taking action against the British government.

[ZAPHOD2319 3,896]

 

[We Hate Scouse 10,261]

3 hours ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

 

No shit 🤣

[DDA 9,570]

We miss you already Roman..

What a fucking owner he was. 😢 

[Johnnyeye 7,415]

2 minutes ago, DDA said:

We miss you already Roman..

What a fucking owner he was. 😢 

fuck the UK government

[NikkiCFC 7,601]

7 hours ago, Johnnyeye said:

fuck the UK government

Money is still frozen. Didn't even reach Ukraine. 

[Tomo 21,684]

8 hours ago, DDA said:

We miss you already Roman..

What a fucking owner he was. 😢 

He was a great owner all in all would be nonsense to suggest otherwise but transfers like Kepa and Lukaku have very much done their part in contributing to this situation.

[DDA 9,570]

17 minutes ago, Tomo said:

He was a great owner all in all would be nonsense to suggest otherwise but transfers like Kepa and Lukaku have very much done their part in contributing to this situation.

100% but he always found a way for us to win even with terrible transfer decisions. He demanded success 

[Mário César 819]

we've been in trouble since conte title...

[Blue Armour 4,168]

3 hours ago, Mário César said:

we've been in trouble since conte title...

For the first time in a long time we had a spine again in the team with Costa, Hazard, Fabregas, Kante and even the maligned Courtois.

Conte went ahead and mucked things up with Diego., replacing him with the mentally weak Morata.

Never recovered fully since. 

[Mário César 819]

28 minutes ago, Blue Armour said:

For the first time in a long time we had a spine again in the team with Costa, Hazard, Fabregas, Kante and even the maligned Courtois.

Conte went ahead and mucked things up with Diego., replacing him with the mentally weak Morata.

Never recovered fully since. 

and matic and even courtois

we lost a world class goalkeeper and a very goodmidfiedler 

even diego costa at first half of that season was world class and even we were shit at second half of the season, he help us a lot with the title 

besides this stuff, moses and alonso showed they were a only very good season 

[Vesper 27,378]

Roman Abramovich’s frozen Chelsea money could help Ukraine victims next month

£2.35 billion is still in the bank account of sanctioned Abramovich’s company Fordstam from sale last year of west London club

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roman-abramovich-s-frozen-Chelsea-money-could-help-ukraine-victims-next-month-zw7zqh5df

Roman Abramovich’s frozen Chelsea money could start to reach causes to help victims of the war in Ukraine as early as next month, though the Russian-born oligarch will have to give his consent to releasing funds.

It is a year next week since the sale of Chelsea to a Todd Boehly-led consortium went through. The £2.35 billion is still in the bank account of Abramovich’s company Fordstam, which has been frozen by the British government since he was sanctioned because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The sale of Chelsea was approved by the government on the basis that the money would go to victims of the war.

Mike Penrose, a former chief executive of Unicef UK who is the head of the foundation set up to administer the money from the Chelsea sale, admitted that the process of getting the funds released for the good causes had taken much longer than he had envisaged but that he was now hopeful of a resolution.

Several projects covering health, housing, education and agriculture have been earmarked for funds.

Once the British government issues a licence allowing for the frozen funds to go to the foundation, then Fordstam — where Abramovich is still named as the person with significant control — will have to “push the button” to release the money.

“We believe we are in the final stage — it is one year next week and we hope we can get all the legals sorted out by then,” Penrose said.

“Dealing with three different [British] governments in that year has also been an issue, because you have to deal with new people each time and it is very complex.

 

“It has taken a lot longer than expected due to those complexities and the bureaucracies involved with the multiple jurisdictions, but everything is in place to go now, we are just waiting. The money is still there and is still very much on the table and I am very confident the agreement will be honoured.

“We have a world-class board lined up, and we have some initial programmes lined up linked to health, housing, education and agriculture, so we can start very quickly.”

Penrose has kept Fordstam’s secretary, Paul Heagren, updated on progress throughout the year, and confirmed that the company would have to release the funds formally once the government had issued the licence.

“They still own the money and it is still in their account but they are not involved in the negotiation,” he said. “This is sanctioned money not appropriated money so legally it is still the property of the person who has been sanctioned.

“We will get a licence from the government that permits the money to be transferred to us, and someone from the Fordstam end has to press the button to transfer it.

“It has been all written into the deed of undertaking to sell the club.”

[Vesper 27,378]

Inside Roman Abramovich’s Quest for Portuguese Citizenship—An All-Access Pass to the EU

Even amid sanctions, the Russian oligarch found a path through his Sephardic heritage—but the country’s well-intended policy may now be history as a result.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/roman-abramovich-eu-citizen

 

 

As Rabbi Daniel Litvak stepped out of the cab at the airport in Porto one Thursday morning last March, a cluster of plainclothes Portuguese cops swarmed him. His son, Malkiel, watched in shock as more than a dozen men halted traffic, seized bags, and bundled his father into a vehicle, speeding off without explanation. To Malkiel, it looked like a kidnapping.

The officers were from a branch of the federal Polícia Judiciária. They drove Litvak three hours south to their headquarters in Lisbon, where they booked him, photographed him, and placed him in a cell for the night, according to Litvak, alongside a man from Pakistan arrested for attempted murder and a local arrested for armed theft. The eventual charges against Litvak included document forgery, influence peddling, and money laundering—and he was arrested, he was told, based on an anonymous tip that he was trying to leave the country.

The next morning, the Lisbon team expanded their dragnet in Porto, searching several properties, including the city’s Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue, named for a wealthy Jewish dynasty whose family members had helped fund the synagogue’s completion in the late 1930s, just before thousands of Jewish refugees began passing through neutral Portugal as they fled Nazi persecution. After the war, the country’s fascist dictatorship supported a policy known as “Re-Christianization” that left little room for minority religions. The building fell into disrepair until this century, when legislation to offer citizenship to those with Portuguese Jewish descent accelerated the revival of the Jewish community. The Comunidade Israelita do Porto is now 1,000 strong, with a headquarters and a small museum sitting catty-corner to the synagogue’s front gate.

Yoel Zekri, a young French Israeli dentist who moved to the city in 2015, was in the synagogue that Friday, working to prepare the Shabbat meal. Around 9 a.m. several dozen officers showed up, some of them armed, and some of them climbed the stairs to the entrance. Zekri’s polite greeting—“Oui, bonjour?”—was rebuffed with a stern response—“Search warrant”—as officers barged in brandishing a clutch of documents. (The Portuguese attorney general’s office, which oversees the judicial police, told Vanity Fair that magistrates are not allowed to comment on specific cases, and the investigations “are covered by legal secrecy.”)

The day Litvak was arrested, Boris Johnson’s government had imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Abramovich—by then already a Portuguese citizen.

Zekri spotted a highly recognizable name on the papers mentioned as probable cause, though the person had never set foot in the synagogue. It belonged to a Jewish man who had recently been granted Portuguese citizenship: Roman Abramovich.

The day of Litvak’s arrest in March 2022—14 days into Russia’s war in Ukraine—Boris Johnson’s government had imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on Abramovich, known as “Putin’s wallet,” and his estimated $12 billion. The European Union followed suit five days later. But Abramovich was ahead of the game. In July 2020, the oligarch had certified his heritage as the descendant of Jewish people long ago expelled from Portugal; by the following April, he had consequently gained Portuguese citizenship—and thereby the possibility of lifelong residency in the European Union, as well as the ability to challenge European sanctions imposed on him. (A spokesperson for Abramovich said he did not “wish to comment” for this story.)

Abramovich, who grew up an orphan in Russia’s frozen north, made the bulk of his fortune buying a state-owned energy conglomerate from the Yeltsin-era Russian state on the cheap before selling it back to a Putin-led government a decade later for more than 50 times the value of his original stake. Thrice married with seven kids, his life has been unfailingly colorful, his $350 million Boeing 787 Dreamliner the stuff of legend. But the global reaction to the war in Ukraine severely hampered his ability to flit between mega-yachts and luxurious properties like the Château de la Croë on France’s Cap d’Antibes; in April 2022 French authorities froze the villa that had been home to royalty from Britain, Belgium, Italy, and Egypt, as well as Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. Abramovich had acted as an occasional mediator between the Kremlin and Kyiv, even suffering a bout of suspected poisoning there, as The Wall Street Journal reported. At the Ukrainians’ behest, the US did not sanction him, despite demands from some members of Congress.

Abramovich’s unlikely citizenship from a small, sunny western European nation like Portugal had been public knowledge before Putin initiated his campaign. But the extraordinary details behind Abramovich’s citizenship application and its approval by Portuguese authorities, many never previously reported, reveal unsettling truths about the allure of wealth, the promise of nationality, and the strength of nationalism. At a time of deep political agitation between Russia and the West, Abramovich’s rapid procurement of European Union citizenship has caused embarrassment for authorities in Portugal, according to current and former politicians. But Litvak’s story also raises serious questions about the fairness of the country’s justice system and the powerful persistence of antisemitism, particularly in Europe.

Litvak, 63, grew up 9,000 miles from Abramovich, though around the same time, in Buenos Aires, his grandparents having fled Europe in the early 20th century. As a young man he had moved to Israel to finish his rabbinical studies. He began working in Porto in 2007 and has been the rabbi there ever since. His wife, Ruth, and his six children live full-time in Israel, where he had been heading before his arrest. Over the years, his role and responsibilities in Porto expanded considerably, mirroring the growth of the community he serves, in the city where his Jewish faith had—long ago—been almost entirely obliterated.

By the late 1400s, what was once a patchwork of fiefdoms across the Iberian peninsula had narrowed through centuries of conflict and compromise to just two major powers: the kingdom of Portugal and the combined kingdom of Castile and Aragon, precursor to modern Spain. In 1492, the rulers of the latter, Ferdinand and Isabella, issued an edict calling for the expulsion of their country’s hundreds of thousands of Jewish residents. Many sought refuge to the west, where a Portuguese king promised them protection. But just four years later, a new king ordered an expulsion, part of a prenup with his wife, Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter. Historians say that while a small number of expulsions were carried out, King Manuel did not want successful Jewish people to abandon his economy, so he forcibly converted them to Christianity, though some maintained their faith in private, particularly in the country’s more remote regions. Those families became known much later as “crypto Jews,” or by the Hebrew term Bnei Anusim (roughly “descendants of forced ones”).

Abramovich’s global travel on a $350 million Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the stuff of legend. but the Russian invasion of Ukraine severely hampered his ability to flit between mega-yachts and luxurious properties.

Elsewhere over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Inquisition hunted down any conversos perceived as insincere. Porto’s old walled Jewish neighborhood became known as Vitória, or Victory—alluding to Christianity’s conquest of the heretical Judaic faith. Hundreds of Jewish families understandably fled elsewhere, either to more welcoming cities in Northern Europe like Antwerp and Amsterdam or to existing communities in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. They became known as the Sephardim, after the Hebrew word for the Iberian peninsula, Sefarad.

Fast-forward five centuries or so. Successive financial crises left tiny Portugal on its knees—no longer able to exploit the wealth of former colonies, instead reliant on an almost $100 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in 2011. Desperate for foreign investment and with an aging population, politicians turned their focus to immigration policy. In 2012 the government in Lisbon introduced a program that offered residency permits to wealthy foreigners if they invested more than $600,000 in property. (More than 5,000 Chinese applicants and over 500 from the US have obtained these so-called “golden visas.”)

The head of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, José Ribeiro e Castro, envisioned a similar program that might generate not just investment but goodwill. He’d been contacted on Facebook several years earlier by a Jewish man in New York, where the oldest Sephardic community in the US had been founded in the 1650s. The man, a stranger, had asked if any statutes might offer him and his community citizenship, Ribeiro e Castro recounted in his Lisbon office. The politician consulted the law book and indeed discovered an avenue, but it was convoluted and untested.

As Spanish authorities began to develop a similar “law of return,” several Portuguese lawmakers from the Socialist Party proposed legislation. Ribeiro e Castro—a Christian Democrat—heartily endorsed the “process that honors Portugal,” as he put it in an op-ed at the time. “It was a symbolic reparation,” he said to VF, and a way to restore “the composition of the national tissue of the country.”

In early 2015 Portugal rolled out the pathway to naturalized citizenship. In short: just a clean criminal record and proof of Sephardic ancestry, which would typically require authentication by boards representing either of the country’s two largest Jewish communities, in Lisbon and Porto. Only once Sephardic heritage had been certified could a person apply for citizenship.

For the volunteer board members in both communities, this represented a big responsibility. Israeli authorities had developed vast government departments over decades to determine Jewish descent, but there was no recognized legal or scientific standard for affirming specifically Sephardic ancestry as distinct from, say, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, or Ethiopian Jewish backgrounds. Plus, the Portuguese communities were being given just months to set up their systems.

The government provided no formal estimate for the number of people worldwide who might qualify, and the new regulations were vague about the threshold to prove a person’s Sephardic roots, giving community leaders significant discretion. In Lisbon, the board began hiring graduate students and PhDs to trawl through archives from the Inquisition and compare their findings with applicants’ family trees. “It’s the biggest history lab in Portugal, bigger than the universities,” said José Ruah, the treasurer and longtime board member of the Lisbon community, whose own family returned to Portugal from North Africa around the same time the Inquisition finally sputtered in the 1820s. In Lisbon, people requesting Sephardic certification did not need to identify as Sephardic Jews, only prove a link to family who once had been, which could take months or years.

Porto’s leaders chose to interpret the new law’s criteria rather differently. Applicants would have to identify as Jewish or be the child of a Jewish parent and provide an attestation from their local rabbi that they “had a tradition of belonging to a Sephardic community of Portuguese origin,” alongside evidence that might include the etymology of their surname, the use in their family of a language called Ladino (largely derived from Old Castilian Spanish and Portuguese), or other proof of direct descent. Final approval of all applicants would fall to Litvak and others working under community guidelines—and decisions would be made with minimal delay.

In the eyes of the state, at least publicly, neither community’s approach was necessarily more correct than the other, and for the first few years not a single official raised a red flag or published any complaints. Just 466 applications were logged in 2015, the first year of the program. By 2020, though, that number hit 34,876. The Sephardim had been the world’s first truly global Jewish community, ending up everywhere, from Libya to London, Hamburg to Mexico City. Folders filled with multilingual marriage certificates and photo albums flooded in from all corners.

By far the largest surviving number of Sephardim can be found in Israel. A bustling avenue to Portuguese citizenship rapidly developed there, with several corporations springing up to service the interest. “It was like a factory: 100 clerks, telephones,” recalls Leon Amiras, the vice president of the Israeli Bar Association, who was initially skeptical about having non-lawyers involved. He had personally helped a couple hundred Sephardim apply, following word-of-mouth referrals, from his office opposite the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem. But the more he saw of the larger operators, the more he grew to admire their seriousness and professionalism. They were, he says, “‘tak, tak, tak,’ first stage, second stage.…” He trails off to pull out his phone and show me several slick commercials produced by one such firm, called Portugalis.

Like Litvak, Amiras was born in Argentina. His grandparents had fled Turkey during an early 20th-century conflict with Greece, and he successfully gained Spanish and Portuguese citizenship thanks to Sephardic ancestors in both his parents’ families. But he told me his Portuguese certification from the community in Porto required far less documentation than the endless back-and-forth with the designated Jewish community in Spain. “The difference between the Portuguese procedure and the Spanish procedure is like when you have two girlfriends,” he explained with a hint of mischief. “One says ‘I really love, love you, want to be with you.’ The other says, ‘I’m not sure if I want you, if you want to be with me, I want flowers, I want a Rolex, I want this, I want this, I want this.’”

The subsequent deluge of citizenship and passport requests—the latter as proof of the former—began to outpace Portugal’s poorly staffed civil service, and delays mounted. By June 2020, foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva appeared before Parliament to ask for change. “There are an increasing number of people who come to that consulate,” he said, quoting a telegram from Portugal’s ambassador to Israel, “both to prepare applications and to collect their citizen cards or passports, who manifest complete ignorance about Portugal, its culture and history, even declaring they have no intention of visiting our country.” Israeli firms, he told lawmakers, had been advertising Portuguese citizenship applications during Black Friday sales. Such “prostitution,” he called it, of the country’s nationality “damaged Portugal’s international reputation.” Another lawmaker proposed adding a two-year residency requirement. Various Jewish communities began to worry that the right of return wouldn’t last much longer.

On July 16, 2020, an applicant with the Hebrew name of “Nachman ben Aharon” emailed the Porto community. “Dear Community,” he wrote in English. “I am a Sephardic Jew member of Sephardic community. Rabbi Boroda interviewed me and attested my Sephardic origin. Thank you, Roman.” Attachments included a birth certificate, a PDF file entitled “Letter from the Rabbi,” copies of Russian and Israeli passports, and a Microsoft Word document entitled “Roman Abaramovich [sic] Family tree.” It included two parents, Irina and Arkadiy, born in the USSR, and four grandparents, born in the “Russian Impire [sic].” One hour and 53 minutes later someone responded, “Shalom. Approved” and requested some information be sent in a different format.

Four days later, a SWIFT payment receipt shows Abramovich instructed his bankers at UBS in Switzerland to pay a “charitable contribution” of 250 euros to the Jewish Community of Porto’s account at the local subsidiary of Spanish banking giant Santander. It was the standard processing fee, which, multiplied across tens of thousands of applicants over several years, has helped Porto’s Jewish community accomplish a great deal, including feature films about Judaic history in Portugal, a moving Holocaust museum, and tours for schoolchildren. A few weeks later, Abramovich supplied the reformatted information and proof of payment. He also wrote, “I plan to donate you [sic] on the permanent basis for the long term.” His application was immediately passed to the Porto community’s back office. Gabriel Senderowicz, the community’s current president—using the pseudonym Berel Rosenstein, as he commonly did to avoid hassle from pushier applicants, he explained to me—alerted other members of the “support committee.” He suggested the group send an email of thanks, which was duly written and dispatched. (“Those who doubt Abramovich’s Sephardic origins do not know the law, do not know the case, or do not know both,” Senderowicz told VF.)

Abramovich’s “Letter from the Rabbi” had been written by Alexander Boroda, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. In 2018 Boroda had officially recognized Abramovich for two decades—and half a billion dollars—of contributions to the federation. The two men have been close for many years: They were photographed enjoying lunch together at Basil Pizza & Wine Bar in Brooklyn back in 2013. Boroda wrote in the certification letter that his friend’s heritage was “based on my acquaintance with Roman Abramovich testimonies and a personal interview that I conducted.” He added the billionaire “preserves Sephardic rituals, lifestyle, traditions and food customs.” When asked what food customs distinguish a Sephardic family in Russia, he told VF, speaking from a rowdy restaurant in Rome, “I don’t know exactly.” Boroda added that he’d offered Sephardic assurance for “20, 30, not more” Russian Jewish people seeking Portuguese citizenship, and noted that a 23andMe test had put his own genetic heritage at 0.6 percent Spanish and Portuguese. Boroda did not mention something that Senderowicz did, however: that he sought Porto’s Sephardic certification for himself, just a few months after Abramovich. When asked about this later, a representative said Boroda was on a “personal holiday” and unable to comment.

In a memorandum to the board, a member stated that the certification of Abramovich’s Sephardic roots from Boroda was “reliable.” The note went on to say that though the Porto community had “always been quite averse to accepting such cases, fundamentally because of the difficulty of treatment,” Abramovich was not only deserving of a certificate thanks to his community of origin, but also because he was rich enough to buy citizenship elsewhere and was instead choosing to become part of a “small dignified country unfortunately on the brink of bankruptcy.”

In August 2020, the Porto community wrote to the prime minister’s office saying that Roman Abramovich was an example of a Sephardic Portuguese Jew who would “try to mobilize to help Portugal.” By early September Abramovich was emailing a member of the Porto board that he had “heard many good things about your community from Rabbi Boroda,” adding that he planned to “become a member of your community and participate in all activities.”

On October 14, 2020, Abramovich filed his application for Portuguese citizenship at the Conservatória dos Registos Centrais in Lisbon, where it sat, unprocessed, for several months, along with thousands of others.

Whatever the motivation, Abramovich’s desire for Portuguese citizenship emerged against the background of some very specific geopolitical circumstances. In early 2018, two Russian military officers posing as tourists attempted to poison a former Russian spy in the English cathedral city of Salisbury, cratering the UK government’s relationship with Moscow. Abramovich—whose British investor visa was already facing scrutiny—withdrew his visa renewal request after the original expired that May. The same month, on a visit to Moscow, Litvak learned from Russia’s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, that Abramovich might have Sephardic heritage. At the end of May, Abramovich jetted to Tel Aviv after Israel confirmed his eligibility for citizenship. Almost overnight, he went from Britain’s 13th wealthiest resident to Israel’s richest citizen (he is now second to the late casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson’s wife, Miriam). Abramovich continued to pursue residency options in Europe.

In September of that year, a court in Lausanne, Switzerland, directed the release of a police report that had blocked Abramovich’s two-years-long attempt to set up residence in Verbier. Local officials had described him as “a very attractive taxpayer for the community” and approved his application, but the police ultimately decided his presence would constitute a reputational risk—and potential security risk—for Switzerland, citing 1990s-era allegations of money laundering as well as alleged ties to criminal organizations. Abramovich’s Swiss lawyer issued a response insisting that “Mr. Abramovich has submitted to numerous, thorough background checks by government and business partners over the years and such unsubstantiated allegations have never been at issue.”

In February 2021, a Porto board member wrote to Maria de Lurdes Serrano, the head of the central registry office in Lisbon, requesting a “declaration of urgency” for processing Abramovich’s application, invoking reasons this was in the national interest including “Portuguese Jewish diplomacy in the world,” “recovery of the national economy,” and the “prestige of Portuguese State institutions.” Nothing about the letter was illegal, nor is there any evidence of a financial quid pro quo involving the Porto community. But perhaps fearing that perception, the letter stated: “Given the brutal increase of anti-Semitism in Europe and the certainty that the following information would cause headlines and outcry against Jews, as taught by Jewish history in European territory, we ask Your Excellency to take all measures so that said information never falls into the public square.”

Within days, Lurdes Serrano wrote back, assuring that the Abramovich application would “not take more than 10 months.” She soon instructed a staff member on the fourth floor, where some Sephardic nationality applications were handled, to “place this urgent request in the process…and follow along its processing, so as not to exceed the period of 10 months.” Ten months is the statutory minimum—so her reiteration of that time frame, and the fact she copied two central registry office board members, struck at least one person with related experience as a sign that Lurdes Serrano understood her correspondence might be examined in the future. Both the country’s intelligence service and the Polícia Judiciária—who are still investigating Litvak and several other members of Porto’s Jewish community—confirmed in response to her that they had no opposition, “nada consta,” to Abramovich’s application. Normally, clerks wait several weeks or even months for a police response; Abramovich’s case was actioned within just 24 hours. A spokesperson for the Polícia Judiciária did not answer VF’s questions about the timing.

Usually, as Portugal’s citizenship application portal makes explicit, candidates can expect to wait 24 to 29 months, but Abramovich waited only nine weeks from the February date the Porto board flagged his application for Lurdes Serrano to the time he was granted a “naturalized citizen birth certificate” on April 30. A few weeks later, Lurdes Serrano confirmed to the board that Abramovich’s citizenship had been granted: “I inform you that the respective nationality registration has already been carried out.” A rare surviving billionaire from Russia’s “gangster capitalism” era who still retained a direct line to Vladimir Putin now possessed EU citizenship. Even his own local lawyer told VF she had been “surprised” at the speed. In response to questions from VF, the Portuguese government agency that oversees that central registry office said “disciplinary procedures” were ongoing.

At the end of that month, Abramovich visited Porto to watch his soccer team, Chelsea FC, clinch victory in the finals of Europe’s Champions League tournament, beating Manchester City, a team owned by the brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, who also happens to be the ruler of Dubai’s son-in-law. (This was before the UK government forced him to sell the club amid war-related sanctions.) On the pitch afterward, Abramovich waved to fans, hugged players, and posed with the trophy, though he did not mention his new citizenship.

Portugal had been left on its knees—no longer able to exploit the wealth of former colonies, reliant instead on a $100 billion bailout.

It was ultimately Alexei Navalny—the Russian opposition leader currently in a Siberian jail—who directed global attention to Abramovich’s citizenship in December 2021, shortly after the Portuguese press first confirmed it. He criticized Portuguese authorities for “carrying suitcases of money” and wrote on his Twitter account that the oligarch had “finally managed to find a country where you can give some bribes and make some semi-official and official payments to end up in the EU.” Santos Silva, the Portuguese foreign minister who back in 2020 had advocated for changes to the law, pushed back against Navalny’s claims in a press conference. “The idea that Portuguese public sector employees carry suitcases of money is insulting,” Santos Silva said, insisting the allegation was “not true. And as we all know, when criticism has no basis, it also has no pertinence.” (VF has seen no evidence that Porto’s board members or civil servants working in the Conservatória dos Registos Centrais received any payment beyond the standard processing fee.) A spokesperson clarified to VF that Santos Silva had not meant to imply that Abramovich’s application procedure was legal, however; around the time of Litvak’s arrest in March last year, Santos Silva asserted that action was needed to keep the law from being “manipulated”—pervertida. The Portuguese government, meanwhile, has acknowledged that Abramovich will not lose his nationality as a result of EU sanctions, nor can he be prevented from visiting Portugal (barring an extraordinary outcome from the Litvak investigation).

The day before Litvak’s arrest, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa formally proposed a new set of regulations on Sephardic nationality: Applicants would have to prove inheritance of property or corporate shares in Portugal or show evidence of regular trips to Portugal throughout their lifetime to “demonstrate an effective and lasting connection.” David Mendoza, the London-based president of the Sephardic Genealogical Society, considers this an obscene undermining of the original offer; the Inquisition was efficient in its terrors. “My last living relative in Portugal was burnt alive in 1732, and they have an inventory of everything they confiscated from him,” he says. “How can we inherit property if everything was confiscated hundreds of years ago?”

Portugal has become a popular destination for a host of influential people, straining the housing market in a nation with one of Europe’s lowest average incomes. Tamir Dean Pardo, the former head of Mossad, is now a citizen thanks to his Sephardic heritage. Others have found nationality through different Portuguese immigration exceptions. The Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary head of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims and a billionaire, was granted citizenship even more quickly than Abramovich following an urgent request from Rebelo de Sousa. Two children of former Angolan strongman José Eduardo dos Santos are Portuguese on paper. They join various international boldface names who own Portuguese real estate, though some are already European or are simply foreign investors: Designer Philippe Starck and Fiat heir Lapo Elkann have purchased luxurious homes along the coast. Elkann, who converted to his father’s Judaic faith in 2009, reportedly recently played host, alongside his Portuguese wife, to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, while Madonna has a house near Lisbon.

Last September, six months after his arrest, Litvak won an appeal to lift some of the punitive measures against him: the confiscation of his passport, which rendered him unable to leave the country, and thrice weekly check-ins with the police. The judges heavily criticized the behavior of the prosecutors and law enforcement. “What amounts, who paid, when, relating to which naturalization process?” they wrote in their decision, citing a lack of evidence. “There is nothing in the file that tells us that these payments were of criminal origin.” The judges concluded with a rhetorical question: “How does one defend oneself only from generalities?” The attorney general’s office said inquiries are ongoing, with “analysis of the extensive documentary compilation seized.”

In March, the Porto community board wrote a letter to Rebelo de Sousa requesting an apology for the raids and the arrest, which was forwarded to the prime minister’s office; at the time of publication, there has been no response from the prime minister or president.

Litvak invited me to his home in Ashdod, Israel, where he and his wife made a simple lunch of white rice and homemade meat dumplings, followed by instant coffee. “If they think that the work wasn’t right, they have the right to stop this: ‘We don’t want the law, we change it.’ It’s your country, do that if you want,” he told me in slightly hesitant English. He emphasized that the ultimate controversy was in the government’s own hands: “We didn’t give the nationality to Abramovich.”

On April 15 of this year, the Portuguese government announced plans to end the Sephardic nationality law altogether at the end of 2023. “The purpose of reparation,” the proposal declares, “is understood to have been fulfilled.”

 

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Vesper

[Vesper 27,378]

Special report: What Roman Abramovich did next

https://theathletic.com/4717198/2023/07/27/roman-abramovich-putin-Chelsea/

“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”.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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”.

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.”

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.”

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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 787-7 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.

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.”

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”.

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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”.

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.