The sale of Chelsea Football Club is not to be done: the owner Roman Abramovich is one of the seven Russian oligarchs in the crosshairs of the new sanctions announced by the British government. All of the billionaire’s assets in Britain, where he resides, have been frozen and he has become persona non grata, losing the right to enter the country.
“There can be no safe havens for those who supported Putin’s ferocious attack on Ukraine,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Abramovich put “out of the game”
According to the British Foreign Ministry, Abramovich not only “received concessions and preferential treatment” from the Kremlin, but also actively “contributed to the destabilization of Ukraine, threatening the territorial integrity and sovereignty” of the country. Evraz, a steel company controlled by him, supplied steel for the production of tanks for the Russian army. The stock was suspended on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday after losing 16% following the announcement of the sanctions.
This is a turnaround for the British government, which so far had not accepted the demands of the Labor opposition and numerous NGOs to impose sanctions against Abramovich. The oligarch’s lawyers said it was absurd to think that their client had “any responsibility or influence over the actions of the Russian state.”
Putin’s magic circle hit
The “black list” announced yesterday also includes Oleg Deripaska, former business partner of Abramovich who controls 45% of the mining company En + Group, listed on the London Stock Exchange, and Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company and considered the right hand of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The other four subject to sanctions are all part of the small circle of people close to Putin: they are Andrei Kostin, chairman of the board of directors of Vtb Bank, the second largest Russian bank; Alexei Miller, chairman of the management committee of Gazprom, the largest gas producer; Nikolai Tokarev, president of Transneft, the oil and gas giant; and Dmitri Lebedev, chairman of the board of directors of Rossiya Bank, considered the regime’s bank.