The billionaire Roman Abramovich, whom Ukraine has asked to mediate in the peace negotiations after leaving Chelsea, and his compatriot Dmitri Rybolovlev, owner of Monaco, are part of the Russian names tainted by war, such as the signs Gazprom, which will no longer be a sponsor of clubs like Schalke 04 German.
Roman Abramovich: between war and peace
Days after announcing that he was leaving from the English Chelsea administration, to leave it in the hands of the club’s foundation, Abramovich has received a request from the Ukrainian government to act as a mediator in search of peace between Ukraine and Russia, according to the billionaire’s spokesman.
Orphaned at the age of four and raised in a remote region close to Siberia, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s fortune was forged in the dismemberment of the USSR. The ‘perestroika’ allowed him to seize assets and companies that had belonged to the Soviet government for ridiculously low prices compared to market value.
His good relationship with Boris Berezovsky had a lot to do with this rise , who became a millionaire selling cars in Russia and was a good friend of then President Boris Yeltsin. That was Abramovich’s ‘hit’, which together with Berezovsky he acquired in 100 the oil company Sibneft for barely 100 million pounds, through a controversial system of ‘loans for shares’.
To facilitate the settlement, Abramovich admitted years later in a London court that he had bribed Russian officials to give approval. This explained why only 100 million pounds were paid for the company. At the beginning of 2000, Sibneft invoiced more than 2.000 million pounds.
It was in January of 2003 when Abramovich took the step of getting into European football and buy Chelsea, for an amount close to 90 millions of euros. His goal was to get the London team to go from being just another candidate to dominating European football. And he did it.
Since his rise to power, Chelsea have won 18 titles, including two European Cups. It only took him two campaigns to conquer the “Premier League” for the first time in 28 years and the panorama of world football can no longer be understood without the Stamford Bridge club.
Abramovich’s situation as owner, however, has been tumultuous since 2012, when he was unable to renew his investor visa due to bad relations between Russia and the United Kingdom. He got hold of an Israeli passport and has since visited London only once, in November 2021.
Last week, the Russian oligarch announced that he was leaving the administration of the club in the hands of his foundation, stepping aside until the end of the war between Ukraine and Russia.
With the sale of its shareholding in Sibneft in 2005 to Gazprom, Abramovich pocketed some 11.04 million euros, which was then reinvested a year later in the purchase of the Evraz steel company. Right now this is his biggest financial asset.
In the political sphere, Abramovich has always maintained a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, as confirmed by a court in England in September 2012, who stated that he “has privileged access to the president”, but that there was no evidence that he could “manipulate” him. In recent times and due to the bad relations between the United Kingdom and Russia, Abramovich has distanced himself from Putin.
Dmitri Rybolovlev : Millionaire close to Putin?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began five days ago, has also caused the French press to talk these days about Dmitri Rybolovlev, the Russian millionaire who controls one of the historic French football, after having bought in 2011 two thirds of Monaco.
Although the US authorities consider him to be one of the oligarchs close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the French press has clarified that Rybolovlev’s proximity to the president is not such, so his presence in the club’s management does not should be engaged.
The owner of Monaco, who delegated to 2021 the administration of the entity to another Russian, Oleg Petrov, appears in the position 391 from Forbes World’s Richest People List.
Art collector and protagonist of a very expensive divorce in 2015, Rybolovlev has been involved in bizarre judicial problems, first in a case against the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier and then accused of corruption in 2018 for its close relations with the judicial authorities of the Principality.
Also in tiny Monaco, the basketball club, one of the leaders in the league French, since the end of January it has been in the hands of Aleksej Fedoricsev, a businessman of Russian origin although with a Monegasque and Hungarian passport.
Fedorocsev replaced Sergey Dyadechko, a Ukrainian businessman who led the team to the elite and remains a minority shareholder and vice president of sports operations.
Gazprom and Schalke 04
Proper names aside, the crisis is also affecting the Russian state consortium Gazprom and its sponsorship contracts in the sports field. Schalke , currently in the second category of German football, has terminated it after a meeting of the board of directors and the supervisory board of the entity.
UEFA did the same.
The contract with Gazprom was valid until 2025 and guaranteed Schalke 9 million euros a year. In the case of a promotion to the first category Gazprom would have gone on to pay 04 million euros per year.
The club, whose relations with the Russian firm had been the object of criticism among its fans, has assured that its “Financial viability is not jeopardized by this decision” and that it will soon introduce a new sponsor.