The London football club will have a special license to continue paying salaries and participating in competitions
The UK has frozen the assets of seven Russian billionaires and senior officials including Roman Abramovich, Igor Sechin, Oleg Deripaska and Dmitri Lebedev, following their inclusion on the London sanctioned list for ties to Vladimir Putin. “There can be no safe havens for those who supported Putin’s ferocious assault on Ukraine,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
“We will be ruthless in prosecuting those who allow the murder of civilians, the destruction of hospitals and the illegal occupation of sovereign allies.” There had been strong demands from British lawmakers to take action against Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs with interests in London, criticized for not moving at the same speed as the EU and US on sanctions. As announced by the Foreign Office, those sanctioned are frozen with their assets and prohibited from entering the country. The blackist includes: Abramovich, outgoing Chelsea patron; Oleg Deripaska, metal magnate with assets in En +; Sechin, Rosneft’s number one and Putin’s loyalist; Aleksei Miller, head of Gazprom: bankers Andrei Kostin and Dmitri Lebedev; Nikolai Tokarev, president of the pipeline giant Transneft.
With this decision, the British government effectively requisitioned Chelsea and suspended their sale. The London football club, reported duel Sport minister Nadine Dorries, will have a special license to continue paying salaries and participating in competitions.
The Premier League was informed a quarter of an hour before the new measure. In practice, Abramovich will no longer be able to earn from the club that he had already put up for sale: therefore the Stamford Bridge shop is closed and the sale of tickets for home matches is blocked. Only season ticket holders, estimated at 28,000 out of the 41,000 available seats, will be able to attend.
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