Only now, when Ukraine is burning, has it become a problem. The British Treasury’s financial sanctions notice said Abramovich was “a prominent Russian businessman and pro-Kremlin oligarch” who was “associated with someone who is or has been involved in destabilizing the world.” ‘Ukraine and undermines and threatens the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine’. , namely Vladimir Putin, with whom Abramovich has had a close relationship for decades.

It’s not just Russian money that has flooded English football. Billionaires from the United States, China, Thailand and elsewhere have all bought Premier League clubs. Their motives are often opaque. American owners tend to see the possibility of profiting from football in the future. Others chase reputation perks. A football club gives a kind of benign visibility – on the world’s biggest billboard – that is perfect for reputation laundering, sometimes called sportwashing.

Abramovich never adequately explained why he bought Chelsea. At the time, he said he was simply a young man looking for fun. Having assets and visibility outside of Russia was also, of course, useful in case you fell out of favor with the Kremlin, as Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky did, and their fortunes and freedom were threatened.

In her book ‘Putin’s People’, former Financial Times Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton spoke to Sergei Pugachev, once a member of Putin’s inner circle, who claimed that buying Chelsea was a sort of forward base of operations for Russian money and influence. “Putin told me personally about his plans to acquire Chelsea football club in order to increase his influence and raise Russia’s profile, not only among the elite, but among ordinary Britons,” he said. he asserted. Abramovich denied this and, along with several other oligarchs, sued for defamation and data protection violations. The case, which led a spokesperson for the Index on Censorship to say that the London courts were becoming a venue to ‘cancel critical journalism, not just in the UK but around the world’, was settled out of court when HarperCollins agreed that some information regarding the oligarch had been inaccurate. The book remains on the shelves with corrections.

staggering hypocrisy

It is these billionaires with ties to the state who are invariably the most powerful. Manchester City has been owned by Sheikh Mansour, a senior member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, since 2008. The club has been transformed into one of the best in Europe, as well as a huge billboard for the United Arab Emirates, one of the least democratic countries in the world. And last year, the English Premier League finally approved the purchase of Newcastle United by a consortium 80% owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the PIF. The PIF is chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who along with UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed was one of the architects of the ruinous war in Yemen that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

US intelligence has concluded that MBS was also responsible for ordering the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The Newcastle takeover was met with opposition from Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée. “I can say that the incident that has damaged the reputation of Saudi Arabia the most is the murder of Jamal. He destroyed his [MBS’s] reputation, he’s desperately trying to use these kinds of deals to fix his image,” she told me.

“Since the murder, many companies and many countries do not want to associate or do business because of the backlash. He wants legitimacy and credibility. Buy a team like Newcastle in the Premier League, in one of the most powerful countries in Europe and the world? You buy legitimacy in the international community. He is accepted and celebrated for saving a struggling team. Everyone sees everything in a different light. Mohammed bin Salman strongly denied allegations that he ordered Khashoggi’s death and the Premier League were confident Newcastle United would not be controlled by the Saudi state and approved the deal.