Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea and symbol of the Russian oligarchy

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who became one of Russia’s richest men on the ruins of the Soviet Union, saw his ties to the Kremlin take a toll on him on Thursday when he was hit by British sanctions.

The oligarch, who last week announced putting the club, the current European champion, up for sale, now sees this transaction suspended due to the freezing of its assets.

The billionaire with the short white beard, melancholic gaze and a reputation for shyness cannot do business with British individuals or companies or travel to this country either.

Inevitable character of the global jet-set and owner of a luxurious residence of 15 rooms in the elegant London neighborhood of Kensington. Abramovich55, is one of those businessmen who became meteorically rich in the 1990s, following the introduction of the market economy in Russiaacquiring considerable political influence.

Leading shareholder of the Evraz steel company, with a fortune estimated by Forbes at more than US$ 13,000 million, its activities in the United Kingdom they were a problem for the government of Boris Johnson, pressured to stop the flow of Russian money, sometimes of dubious origin, in the City, the financial heart of London.

In recent years he has limited his appearances in the UK, where he could travel without a visa thanks to his Israeli citizenship. She also received a Portuguese passport, but the Portuguese justice has opened an investigation into the conditions of her naturalization.

Orphan

Born in Saratov, in the south of Russia, on October 24, 1966, he was orphaned very early and was raised by his uncle. The young Roman grew up partly in the great Russian North and studied Mathematics in Moscowbefore launching into the business world, founding small businesses.

He soon stood out as a businessman with a great sense of smell. In 1996, the government sold most of the shares in the large oil group Sibneft for US$100 million, a fraction of their real value. The shares ended up in Abramovich’s portfolio, which he sold to the public giant Gazprom for a very high amount.

From oil to aluminum to automobiles, his fortune grew rapidly. He financed Boris Yeltsin’s campaign and his arrival in the Kremlin, where the oligarchs forge close relations with the president’s entourage.

When Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin in 2000, Abramovich opted for prudence and distanced himself from the “family” of the former head of state.

gigantic yacht

Thus, he escaped the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovski, an opponent in exile after spending years in prison, or his business partner Boris Berezovski, a fierce critic of power who was found dead in his home in 2013, in England.

His fidelity was rewarded with a governorship in the Chukotka region in the Russian Far East. For a time the first fortune of Russiaaccused of sometimes acting with his financial operations as “submarine” of the Kremlin.

A great football fan, in 2003 he bought an emblematic club in London, the Chelsea, which since its arrival experienced a golden age with weight reinforcements. He has since won five English leagues and, above all, his only two titles in the Champions League (2012 and 2021).

His luxurious life is often hidden from the media, despite having a yacht, the 162-meter-long Eclipse, which can no longer moor in the UK, like the rest of his half-dozen ships, because sanctions Thursday would allow them to be confiscated.

He has seven children and in 2017 he separated from Daria Jukova, the founder of a contemporary art gallery in Moscow.

Always concerned about his reputation, he obtained an apology at the end of 2021 from the publisher of a book on Putin written by the British journalist Catherine Belton. It claimed that the Russian president oversaw a large outflow of dirty money to extend his country’s influence abroad.