Published on :
As the Russian invasion rages in Ukraine, Westerners are expanding their blacklists of Russian leaders and oligarchs. Among them, Roman Abramovich, close to Putin and owner of Chelsea, the London football club whose sale has been suspended.
Who is this very discreet oligarch, whose fortune is estimated at 13 billion dollars, and who never grants interviews? Blue eyes, shy smile, Roman Abramovich is always dressed to the nines. On his wrist, a consumer Polar watch that measures heart rate, but he only travels aboard his Boeing 737 or helicopter. Don’t be fooled by his affable demeanor, he is a formidable negotiator.
Revenge on family history
His energy and strength of character come from his childhood. Born 55 years ago in Saratov in the West of the Soviet Union at the time, Roman lost his mother, Irina, a music teacher, very early on, then his father. A member of the Economic Council of the Komi Autonomous Republic, Arkady is killed in a construction accident. Roman, of Ukrainian Jewish origin, was raised by his uncle, the former child of the Gulag who became his model. Antoine Bourlon, journalist at L’Equipe and author of a documentary devoted to the life of the oligarch, says: “This is his paternal uncle who grew up in the Gulag. And who still managed his life. For Romand Abramovitch this is a great example. As soon as he stopped his studies, he started bartering, doing small business. He quickly felt the blow when setting up his first cooperative. He made plastic toys. At the time, he had this cooperative, his training was not that of the great Soviet schools… He found himself doing logistics for the transport of gasoline and raw materials, and one day ended up in police custody. He is accused of having hijacked a train of gasoline worth several million rubles. And then he comes out of police custody, the money comes back like magic. This is the great mystery of his life, because it will trigger everything. »
His first billion
The meeting with Boris Berezovsky constitutes a great turning point. The influential oligarch who controls several major Russian media opens his address book to him. The two men take advantage of the privatization of national flagships under the Yeltsin presidency. And when the State sells its shares in an oil group Sibneft, Abramovich acquires it. Later he invests in aluminum alongside another oligarch, Oleg Deripaskaand helps fund Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign.
But when he takes over the Russian oligarchy, cautious Abramovich keeps a low profile, notes Lukas Aubin, associate researcher at IRIS, specialist in Russian geopolitics and sport, author of the book Sportokratura under Vladimir Putin, a geopolitics of Russian sport : “A pact was put in place in 2000 by the Russian president who said to the oligarchs: if you take part in the great works to redress Russia, if you do not engage in politics once morest me, then you are free to do business, and you will not be worried by justice. Some oligarchs did not accept this pact. There was the Khodorkovsky affair in 2003. Russia’s first fortune, Mikhail Khodorkovsky [N.D.L.R. puissant patron du groupe pétrolier Ioukos] decides to do business with the Americans and go into politics once morest Vladimir Putin. As a result, he was dragged before the Russian courts and sentenced to ten years in prison. He will be released in 2013 », while his group will be torn apart.
Abramovich, he responds to the injunction of the president who calls for the recovery of Russian sport. “He built a hundred football pitches all over Russia, especially in the Urals. It was Putin’s famous plan. And from the 2010s, we saw the oligarch gradually move away from his native Russia,” observes the researcher.
freedom in business
Governor of the Autonomous District of Chukotka from 2000 to 2008, Abramovich has no political ambitions. And the Kremlin appreciates. While other oligarchs are forced to sell off their assets, Gazprom buys back its shares in the oil company Sibneft at exorbitant prices. By becoming the owner of Chelsea in 2003, the Russian launched a movement, that of the takeover of football clubs by billionaires or sovereign funds. The Abramovich empire takes hold in London. For Lukas Aubin, this billionaire: “is a chameleon who made his fortune like most Russian oligarchs in the 1990s, who was opportunistic and who managed to play both with his economic hand, but also with his political hand. He adapted when Vladimir Putin arrived, and he managed to play on several levels at the same time so that he might continue to be as free as he wanted to be. »
A freedom of action that the new sanctions from London risk hindering. For several years the Russian billionaire was in the sights of the opponent Alexei Navalny, being part of his list of 35 oligarchs close to Putin. Holder of Russian, Israeli and Portuguese passports, he has done all-out patronage, from charities to hospitals and culture.
Chelsea sale suspended
In London a page turns for the Chelsea club, notes Antoine Bourlon: “The sale of Chelsea actually goes back a few years. In 2018, the former agent Serguei Skripal is poisoned in England probably by Russian agents. It triggers a whole wave of diplomatic incidents. Roman Abramovich has his visa which must be renewed. And we make him understand that potentially it might be refused. He’s a little tired of some things. He is already thinking of selling his football club. The club was listed at over 3 billion euros. It is an astronomical amount. People show interest, but it doesn’t go any further. There are very few people who can buy Chelsea at that price. » The atmosphere is no longer festive for the billionaire. Roman Abramovich has indicated that the money from the sale of his football club will go to “all the victims of the war in Ukraine”, whatever their origins. A vague wording, as usual. In the meantime, the sale of Chelsea has been put on hold.
This time the earth is burning under the feet of the billionaire. The British government has added to his personalities blacklist subject to sanctions. There are oligarchs and kleptocrats who because of “their close ties with Putin are complicit in his aggression” with regard to Ukraine, reads the press release of the British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss. They will in principle suffer an asset freeze and a travel ban. In addition to Abramovich, the main targets are: the CEO of Bank Rossiya Dmitry Lebedev, Abramovich’s former business partner and the founder of the aluminum giant Rusal Oleg Deripaska, as well as the general manager of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin. A new wave of measures to which the government of Boris Johnson has finally resolved. The day before the sanctions announcement Roman Abramovich managed to take out his super yacht Solaris from a Spanish shipyard. Just in time.
► To go further:
Antoine Bourlon, Roman Abramovich – The Odyssey of an Oligarch : https://www.lequipe.fr/explore/wf49-roman-abramovitch/
Lukas Aubin, Sportokratura under Vladimir Putin, a geopolitics of Russian sportEd. Bréals 2021
