How did Chelsea dominate in the Roman Abramovich era? In part with players, the Premier League has now concluded, signed involving financial deceptions.
How were they able to avoid a points deduction and accept a fine – albeit a record £10.75m – that they won’t even need to pay themselves?
An explanation is provided in a tranche of league documents that casts a further cloud over the Abramovich ownership that transformed the club’s fortunes.
Across eight years, more than £47m in secret payments were made related to transfers, including to unregistered agents, and concealed on behalf of the club by entities associated with Mr Abramovich.
There was, the league said, “deception and concealment in relation to financial matters”.
They involved deals for some of the biggest stars of the era, including Eden Hazard, David Luiz, Nemanja Matic, Willian, Ramires and Samuel Eto’o. None of the players are accused of wrongdoing or knowing about the payments.
In the period central to the investigation – 2011 to 2018 – Chelsea won the Premier League twice, the Champions League, the FA Cup and the League Cup.
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The league makes no suggestion that any of that success is tainted. But would the outcome of the competitions have been different without these players? How central were these payments to the players being in the team?
The Blues escaped the points deductions imposed on Everton and Nottingham Forest for breaching financial rules.
It is because the league claims that even if the payments had come from Chelsea themselves, the club would still not have overspent to breach profit and sustainability rules.
Chelsea were prepared for the outcome of a case that also involved misconduct in approaches to academy players.
The £10.75m fine will come from the £150m set aside to cover potential fines when Mr Abramovich was forced to sell the club in 2022 after being sanctioned when the UK government targeted oligarchs at the start of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine.
The takeover process uncovered the illicit payments, which the incoming ownership self-reported to football authorities, leading to more leniency on the punishments.
So the only sporting sanction is a one-year transfer ban. It was suspended for two years because of the club’s “exceptional co-operation”.
This completes the Premier League strand of the investigation inside four years, after €10m in fines from UEFA in a related case. But further fines could come from the Football Association and 74 alleged rule breaches.
And yet the football world is still waiting for the outcome of the Premier League’s investigation into Manchester City, almost eight years after the allegations of financial wrongdoing emerged.
The league’s commission hearing the case concluded 15 months ago, and there is no sign of the verdict, as City fought around 130 charges to prove their innocence.
One reason it has dragged on is because of City’s alleged failure to cooperate and assist with the case. They remain under the same ownership of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour.
What the Chelsea verdict shows is that there would not have been a points deduction even for non-cooperation.
It says the fine would have been doubled and a transfer ban immediately imposed for next season had it not been for the “immediate disclosure” by the new ownership, including Americans Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly.
They volunteered thousands of pages of documents.
The mitigating factors in reducing punishments will be looked at by every other club. Chelsea can start looking to the future, but they cannot completely move on from the Abramovich era.
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The Russian is still in a standoff with the UK government over releasing the proceeds of the sale to help victims of the war in Ukraine.
While some Chelsea fans still long for the days of the oligarch and the flow of silverware, the new ownership, along with the Premier League, has exposed the off-the-book payments used to sign so many stars.
There has been no public defence from Mr Abramovich.
