Chelsea faces punishment for violations committed under Roman Abramovich

The English Premier League (EPL) has opened an investigation into the Chelsea football club. According to The Times, the interest of the Premier League’s control bodies was aroused by the financial aspects of two transfers that took place ten years ago. We are talking about the transfers of Willian and Samuel Eto’o from Anzhi Makhachkala to Chelsea, then owned by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. There is reason to believe that the calculations for these transactions were not entirely transparent. Formally, for such a violation, Chelsea could even face deprivation of points in the current championship. Considering, however, that the new leadership of the Londoners themselves notified the Premier League of the violations found, the sanctions are likely to be more lenient.

London Chelsea again have difficulties with regulatory authorities. Once again, this is a gift from the recent past, when the club was owned by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. Let’s remember that he bought the club in 2003but was forced to sell it to American businessman Todd Boehly in the spring of 2022shortly after the start events in Ukraine, due to being included in the UK sanctions lists. During an audit of Chelsea’s finances, the new owners discovered that the club had been submitting incomplete financial information to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for a long time in order to meet the requirements of financial fair play regulations.

Chelsea management independently notified UEFA of the identified violations. As a result, the club avoided excommunication from participation in European competitions, escaping with a fine, albeit an impressive one, of €10 million. As reported The Timesnow Chelsea auditors have found another batch of violations committed in the past.

The new episode concerns two transitions that took place back in 2013.

Then Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov decided to curtail the project to transform Anzhi Makhachkala into a super club and actually organized a sale of previously purchased stars. Two of them – Brazilian Willian and Cameroonian Samuel Eto’o – in August 2013 moved over from Makhachkala to London. Chelsea paid about €35 million for Willian (about the same amount Anzhi gave to Shakhtar Donetsk for the Brazilian a year earlier), and Eto’o (he cost the Makhachkala team €29 million in 2011) was given to the Londoners for free. For the opportunity to move to Chelsea, Eto’o returned part of his salary to Anji (according to his contract, he was entitled to €22 million per season), receiving in return the status of a free agent.

However, it turned out that in this case, too, the regulatory authorities did not receive complete information on the cost and structure of the transactions from Chelsea. Sources told The Times that the London club notified the Premier League that agency fees for the above-mentioned transfers were paid through an unreported transfer of funds from the accounts of offshore companies to the accounts of certain Russian firms. The violation is quite gross, potentially threatening deprivation of points in the current championship (after ten rounds, Chelsea is in 12th place). But given that the club again reported suspicious issues identified in the reporting, as well as Chelsea’s willingness to cooperate, it is unlikely that the Premier League will impose a truly painful punishment.

Most likely, it will cost you another fine. It is also impossible not to take into account the fact that the violations took place before the club was bought by Todd Boely.

Actually, Chelsea recalled this in its statement, adding that at the moment there is not a single person working at the club who was or could be involved in the violations committed.

Alexander Petrov