He felt the tide turn as Russian tanks advanced into Ukraine. And decided to take the lead. On Wednesday March 2, billionaire Roman Abramovich confirmed that he was selling Chelsea football club. He bought it in 2003 for 140 million pounds (168 million euros) and participated in the construction of a solid record: 21 trophies in 19 years, including two Champions Leagues, the Holy Grail of European football. But the time is over for football, even if he is a great fan.
“In the current situation, I have decided to sell him, as I believe it is in the best interest of his supporters, his employees, as well as his sponsors and partners”, said the 55-year-old billionaire. On the same day, Labor MP Chris Bryant announced to his colleagues that Roman Abramovich, “terrified at the thought of being punished”, was also about to sell his London house. Located not far from the Russian Embassy, in “billionaires’ alley”, reputed to be the most expensive in London, the Kensington Palace Gardens has been his property since 2011. He acquired it for 90 million pounds (108 million euros). euros).
“Oligarchs and kleptocrats”
Despite his brief anticipation, Roman Abramovich was overtaken by events. By its links with the Kremlin and its occupant. His name is on the list of seven oligarchs close to Putin sanctioned by the British government, in retaliation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Oligarchs and kleptocrats have no place in our economy or our society. With their close ties to Putin, they are complicit in his aggression,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement. . Abramovich’s assets have been frozen. He is prohibited from traveling and carrying out transactions. The sale of the Chelsea club is suspended. However, he assured that the money would go “to all the victims of the war in Ukraine”, “from all sides”.
Does he keep, thanks to this vague formulation, a way out, or rather back to Russia? Lukas Aubin, associate researcher at IRIS, specializing in the geopolitics of sport and Russia, poses the current challenge for the billionaire: “What will be his next destination, his next move? Rebuild Russian sport or continue to do business in the Western world? The author of the book Sportokratura under Vladimir Putin, a geopolitics of Russian sport, evokes, in the Russian media, “rumors of the creation of a super post-Soviet football league”. Will he take his share?
Real estate, private jets and yachts
Regarding his assets in England, in particular the Chelsea club, Lukas Aubin admits “that the timing of the announcement of the sale of the club is a bit surprising. It had already been in the cards for a few months”. But the businessman “seized the opportunity. This early announcement was perhaps a way of showing pledges to the West, to hope to avoid sanctions”. Without success. The ground shakes under the feet of the jet-setter oligarch. He would own, in addition to Kensington Palace Gardens, various properties around the world, private jets and half a dozen yachts. Including one of 162 meters, so long that it can only moor at the “quai des billionaires”, in Antibes, France. The sanctions taken by London allow the seizure. Its economic activities in Europe, too, are turned upside down.
Abramovich, whose wealth the British government has estimated at 9.4 billion pounds (10.7 billion euros), owns shares in various companies. He is the largest shareholder in the steelmaker Evraz (28.6%); also invested in the Russian company Norilsk Nickel, a specialist in the exploitation and transformation of nickel and palladium. Evraz’s share price fell on Thursday before being suspended by the London Markets Authority. This Friday, all non-executive directors on the board of directors resigned. The company clarified that it does not consider Abramovich “as a person exercising effective control” of the company. And that “British financial sanctions should not apply to the company itself”. Discreet by nature, the oligarch did not speak about the sanctions that target him. If he is used to fleeing the media, he had already limited his appearances in the United Kingdom for a few years – or in the lodges of Stamford Bridge, the London stadium of Chelsea. When he came without a visa, it was with his Israeli passport. He also has a Russian and a Portuguese, even if the Portuguese justice has opened an investigation into the conditions of his naturalization.
His sucess ? “Luck”
Its history, however, takes root in Russia. In Saratov, on the bank of the Volga, in the south of the Soviet Union. He quickly becomes an orphan: his mother, a music teacher, dies when he is two years old; his father died a year later in a construction accident. Roman Abramovich is taken in by his uncle, Leib, a former child of the gulag, now in import-export. After his military service, the future billionaire does “a little barter between Moscow and the north. His first rubles”, writing The Team in a documentary about Abramovich. Resourcefulness. He is also a mechanic, sets up a cooperative – just authorized by Gorbachev – of plastic toys. After the break-up of the USSR, he changed scale thanks to his meeting with the businessman Boris Berezovsky. They benefit from the privatization of national flagships; Abramovitch notably recovers, for a fraction of their real value, the shares of the oil group Sibneft. Oil, aluminum, automobiles, television, airlines… Fortune is made quickly and well. To a Russian journalist, relates The Team, he invokes “luck” as the basis of his success. “Were you in the right place at the right time?” asks the reporter. “You can say that,” he replies.
In addition to money, he gains political influence. Became close to Boris Yeltsin, Abramovich contributes to the financing of the presidential campaign of the successor, Vladimir Putin. When, in the 2000s, the latter took over the Russian oligarchy, the billionaire did not cause a stir. “A pact is put in place by Putin. The oligarchs can do their business if they respect two injunctions: participate in the reconstruction of the country and not oppose him in politics”, recalls Lukas Aubin. Some do not accept. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-CEO of the oil group Yukos, will try the political adventure against Putin. And will spend ten years in penal colonies in Siberia and then Karelia. Abramovich is called upon to rebuild “the aura of Russian sport in the world, one of the strategic axes put in place by Putin”, details the IRIS researcher. He set to work and financed between 2000 and 2010 “a hundred football pitches throughout Russia”. During the period, he was also elected governor of the autonomous district of Chukotka, in the far east of the country. Without making waves, he continues his business with Western countries.
In recent years, he seems “to have less contact with the Russian president, the two men not being intimate”, according to Lukas Aubin. But here is the name of Abramovich directly attached to that of Putin. In a Russia closing in on itself, the question arises of the place of the sanctioned oligarchs alongside a president who appears increasingly isolated: “To what degree will they rally to him or let go?”