The UK government is preparing legal action to obtain access to the $3.2 billion held from Roman Abramovich\u2019s sale of Chelsea in 2022. A consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital paid a total of $5.2 billion (\u00a34.25 billion) for the club, with $3.2 billion the final sale price and a pledge of $2 billion in investment over the next 10 years.<\/p>\n
The $3.2 billion remains frozen in a U.K. bank account controlled by Fordstam, Abramovich\u2019s company, because the parties have not agreed on the funds\u2019 intended use. The government now says it will pursue litigation to secure the money after negotiations failed to reach a resolution.<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson said: \u201cWe gave Roman Abramovich his last chance to do the right thing. Once again, he has failed to make the donation he committed to.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will now take further steps to ensure that the promise he made at the time of the Chelsea sale is kept.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disagreement stems from the wording of the 2022 agreement. Both sides say the money should support victims of the war, but they differ on how that is defined. The government wants to send the entire sum to Ukraine, while Abramovich has argued there are victims of the conflict outside of Ukraine, including in his native Russia.<\/p>\n
Legal action was seen as the likely outcome more than 12 months ago, and another year of unsuccessful talks has left the government concluding there is no alternative. Reports of an investigation in Jersey, where some of Abramovich\u2019s money was managed, have added to the uncertainty surrounding the funds.<\/p>\n
The draft sale and much of Abramovich\u2019s Chelsea investment were funded through a series of offshore loans, including more than $2 billion interest-free from a Jersey company, Camberley International Investments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK government moves to sue to gain access to frozen funds from Roman Abramovich’s 2022 sale. In U.K.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1505,1038,1317],"class_list":["post-8960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-accounts-2024-25","tag-accounts-2025-26"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}