# Roman Abramovich The oligarch who turned a 1990s loans-for-shares oil deal into a Western celebrity fortune — Chelsea FC, yachts, London property — and who, after the 2022 invasion, became the one prominent Russian billionaire the United States **deliberately did not sanction**, at Ukraine's request, so he could carry messages between Moscow and Kyiv. He remains a back-channel figure in 2026 while fighting the British government over £2.5 billion. ## The fortune In the mid-1990s he and Boris Berezovsky took control of the oil company Sibneft for about $100 million through the loans-for-shares auctions (see [[Russian Deprivatization]]). In 2005 he sold it back to the state, to [[Gazprom]], for about **$13 billion**. In 2012 he won the London lawsuit Berezovsky brought over Sibneft, then called the biggest private lawsuit in British history. He bought Chelsea FC in 2003. ## 2022: sanctioned in Britain, spared in America | Date | Event | |---|---| | Mar 3, 2022 | Suspected poisoning at early Russia–Ukraine talks; U.S. officials were skeptical | | Mar 10, 2022 | UK freezes his assets alongside six other oligarchs including [[Oleg Deripaska]] | | Mar 23, 2022 | *The Wall Street Journal* reports [[Volodymyr Zelensky]] asked President Biden to hold off sanctioning him so he could act as an intermediary | | Mar 29, 2022 | Attends the Istanbul peace talks | | May 25, 2022 | UK approves the sale of Chelsea to a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake: £4.25 billion headline, of which **£2.5 billion** is the price for his shares, frozen pending transfer to a foundation for Ukraine | | Sept 21, 2022 | Helps facilitate the prisoner exchange brokered by Saudi Arabia and Turkey — 215 Ukrainians and 10 foreigners for the pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk — after meeting [[Mohammed bin Salman]] | ## The £2.5 billion standoff The Chelsea money has never moved. In December 2025 Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government issued a licence giving him 90 days to transfer it to a foundation or face court. He missed the March 2026 deadline; his side argued only **£987 million** was "net gain," after £1.43 billion in loans owed to another of his companies — itself under investigation in Jersey, which froze about £5.3 billion of his assets in 2022. In April 2026 he took the UK to the European Court of Human Rights over the Jersey freeze. In June 2026 Zelensky confirmed meeting him in Kyiv; Abramovich had delivered a message from Putin about a possible framework for talks. ## Why it matters here Abramovich shows that sanctions policy is also diplomacy: the U.S. held off on him because both sides found him useful. His Chelsea pledge shows the other side — a public promise to Ukraine quietly redefined as "net proceeds" after repaying himself. See [[Russian Oligarchy]] and [[Offshore Financial Secrecy]]. ## See Also - [[Russian Oligarchy]] · [[Russian Deprivatization]] · [[Gazprom]] - [[Mikhail Khodorkovsky]] · [[Oleg Deripaska]] · [[Mikhail Fridman]] - [[Volodymyr Zelensky]] · [[Russo-Ukrainian War]] - [[Paradise Papers]] · [[Offshore Financial Secrecy]]