U.K. lawmakers expressed frustration Wednesday that funds from the sale of the Chelsea soccer club have not yet gone to support Ukrainian war victims as had been promised nearly two years ago by the former owner, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Abramovich sold Chelsea in 2022 after being sanctioned by the British government for what it called his enabling of Russia’s “brutal and barbaric invasion” of Ukraine.
He pledged to donate the £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) from the sale to victims of the war. But almost 20 months later, the funds are still frozen in a bank account in an apparent disagreement with the British government over how they should be spent. The stalemate highlights the difficulty for Western governments to use frozen assets for Ukraine — even those that have been pledged by their owner.
“We are all completely baffled and frustrated that it has taken so long,” said Lord Peter Ricketts, chair of the European Affairs Committee in the upper chamber of the U.K. parliament, which produced the report.
“We can’t understand why either Abramovich or the British government didn’t ensure that there was more clarity in the original undertaking which … would avoid arguments about exactly who in Ukraine would get this money,” Ricketts said.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
U.K. lawmakers expressed frustration Wednesday that funds from the sale of the Chelsea soccer club have not yet gone to support Ukrainian war victims as had been promised nearly two years ago by the former owner, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
“We are all completely baffled and frustrated that it has taken so long,” said Lord Peter Ricketts, chair of the European Affairs Committee in the upper chamber of the U.K. parliament, which produced the report.
A former chief executive of Unicef UK, Mike Penrose, who was appointed to head the foundation that will control the funds when it is agreed they can be unfrozen, told The Associated Press that use of the money in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine would not be permitted because it would contravene existing sanctions.
“Of the high-profile oligarchs, Abramovich is the one who, over the last two years, has managed to successfully keep a foot in both camps,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Keatinge suggested that Abramovich might shy away from any arrangement in which all of the Chelsea funds are spent in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government — as opposed to humanitarian projects elsewhere — because that might put him in “conflict” with the Kremlin.
In the report Wednesday, the U.K. lawmakers also recommended that the U.K government consider introducing a process for reviewing sanctions on individuals if they meet certain conditions, such as providing support for reconstruction of Ukraine.
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