What? He has no ownership stake. The purely hypothetical concern was over money potentially going to his children; a scenario posed by Boris and his cronies when there was resistance to turning the whole sum over to that arse-backwards excuse for a government. Boris already betrayed his intentions by talking about siphoning funds off the Chelsea sale for "UK grassroots football" - i.e. unaccountable payouts for Tory donors. The "government source leaks" were unashamed - as was Ratcliffe's bid at the 11th hour.
Abramovich has literally written off billions in losses for Chelsea - he wasn't doing this for a positive ROI. If anything he's been remarkably consistent in this regard - if profit was his motive he would have sold Chelsea long ago. Obviously he deserves to be kicked out but arguing that he's secretly been doing all this for profit is incongruous at best.
Penrose with his background as chair of UNICEF is far more qualified to disburse charitable donations than the Tories. He's quite right to point out that Boris being butthurt about not getting his piece of the pie and delaying the deal will lead to direct humanitarian consequences.
This is what the huge concern is about:
Company and financial records seen by the JEP reveal that a St Helier-registered firm loaned £1.5 billion to one of the Chelsea FC owner’s companies.
The common thread of a network of companies linked to Mr Abramovich (pictured right), who as this newspaper revealed in 2018 was given housing qualifications to live in Jersey, appears to be a finance firm based behind a nondescript door in Colomberie.
Mr Abramovich owns Fordstam, a company registered at Stamford Bridge, also the location of the premiership side, that loans money to Chelsea FC. Fordstam has received funds from Camberley International Investments – a firm registered at 50 Colomberie.
One of Mr Abramovich’s close associates, Eugene Tenenbaum – a financier and director at Chelsea FC and Fordstam – is a Canadian national with Jersey residence. This newspaper understands that he was given his housing qualifications at around the same time as Mr Abramovich, for whom he works.
Mr Tenanbaum was until April 2020 a director at MHC (Services), a consultancy company whose office is located at Stamford Bridge. It recorded a turnover of £10.8m in 2020, with the lion’s share of this coming from Jersey (£8.53m, which was up from £8.27m in 2019). The second-largest turnover was in Russia (£1.54m), while it also made a turnover in the British Virgin Islands and the UK. Mr Tenenbaum is also a director at Evraz – a FTSE 100 steel and mining business headquartered in London with operations in Russia, with Mr Abramovich a major shareholder in the company, which had revenues of $14.1bn last year.
Also Abromovich, has not said or agreed he will be donating the proceeds to Ukraine, which is part of the agreement of sale. - It is still worded as "victims of war" - Which again is very vague and no guarentee the money would go to help Ukrainian charities.
The guy is so dodgy, only a Chelsea fan would call him Santa Clause and sit on his knee