Documents that were released suggest that Roman Abramovich may have violated football rules; as a result, Chelsea FC may lose points.
Over a ten-year period, the club’s success is believed to have been facilitated by several clandestine payments made by the former owner, a Russian tycoon.
Leaked documents have purportedly revealed a money trail that contains tens of millions of pounds hidden away.
Evidence suggests that by going through Abramovich’s offshore accounts, off-book funds would have been transferred in violation of “financial fair play” legislation.
There are rumors that Chelsea benefited from the transactions, and it’s unclear if the football league’s governing bodies were formally notified of them.
The former squads of key acquisitions Bertrand Traoré, Samuel Eto’o, and Willian, as well as other Chelsea FC employees, seem to be among the beneficiaries, as does an associate of former Chelsea FC manager Antonio Conte.
Experts projected that the Premier League will impose fines or subtract points as a consequence of the transactions, which were uncovered by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Football finance specialist Kieran Maguire, author of The Price of Football, claims that because of the club’s enormous spending, Chelsea often experimented with the idea of reducing its losses.
“If there is evidence that the club has used third-party transactions to circumvent the profitability and sustainability rules, then sanctions would be either financial or a points deduction,” he said.
The latter is more plausible since a commission investigating a club’s operations would seek to issue a warning to deter future offenders of similar behavior.
Chelsea’s finances were already being investigated by the Premier League as part of an investigation that ran from 2012 to 2019.
The west London club said that “incomplete financial information” was provided while Abramovich was the owner.
Apart from the £8.6 million fine levied by Uefa, the organization in charge of overseeing European football, there are reports that the Football Association is looking into the club’s admittance.
The most recent records, which span a longer period of time, have sparked additional research into the potential that Abramovich violated football rules more than once.
The payments were discovered after 3.6 million documents classified as Cyprus Confidential were carefully examined.
The hiring of coach Antonio Conte and Abramovich’s business relationship with Italian football agent Federico Pastorello are linked to the alleged off-book payments.
He signed a contract with Abramovich-owned Conibair Holdings, a company based in the British Virgin Islands, in July 2017.
Conibair gave Pastorello, who is rumored to be close to Conte, £10 million in exchange for a 75% stake in a US-based business fund.
On the same day, Chelsea disclosed Antonio Conte had signed a new deal for £9.6 million annually.
Association des Jeunes Espoirs de Bobo, the former squad of Bertrand Traoré, received a £1 million donation from Leiston Holdings, another Abramovich-owned company, in 2013.
The contract was signed two months after the full-back officially joined the Blues.
The 2013 agreements between Willian and Samuel Eto’o are purportedly linked to additional payments.
Anzhi Makhachkala, the owner of their former team, appears to have benefited from additional payments made by the former Chelsea manager’s company.
Two days after the now-defunct club received the money, Chelsea signed forwards Willian from Brazil and Samuel Eto’o from Cameroon.
It comes after the oligarch was linked by startling files—which the BBC looked into—to two guys known as Vladimir Putin’s “wallets.”
The uncovered trove of documents provided more evidence allegedly linking Abramovich to a clandestine £26 million deal in 2010.
In the alleged clandestine plan, the shares of the immensely profitable Russian advertising company Video International were transferred for less than their apparent value.
According to the alleged transactions, two people in Putin’s inner circle received millions of dollars in earnings from businesses that belonged to a trust that was connected to Abramovich.
