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Chelsea FC has been hit by the Premier League with a 10.75 million pounds ($14.35 million) fine and transfer restrictions for what the body described as “obvious and deliberate” financial breaches orchestrated under the club’s former owner, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
The financial penalty is the largest ever levied by England’s top soccer division. The club was also handed an immediate nine-month academy transfer ban and a suspended one-year ban on first-team player transfers.
The sanctions are the culmination of a three-and-a-half-year investigation that uncovered a vast shadow payroll system, the Premier League said Monday. It found that between 2011 and 2018, third parties associated with the club made millions in undisclosed payments to players, unregistered agents, and other figures to bypass the league's strict financial reporting and investment rules.
According to a sanctions notice published by the league, the off-the-books payments totaled 47.5 million pounds ($63.3 million).
This illicit funding enabled Chelsea to acquire star players who became instrumental to the club’s dominance during the 2010s, including Belgian forward Eden Hazard and Brazilian international Willian.
The investigation also revealed that undisclosed payments were routed to key backroom figures, including Piet de Visser, a renowned Dutch scout credited with bringing top talent to Stamford Bridge, and Frank Arnesen, the club’s former sporting director.
The Premier League concluded that these payments were made using funds controlled by or associated with Abramovich and were executed with the knowledge and approval of former senior officers and directors. The breaches, the league stated, “involved deception and concealment in relation to financial matters.”
The league's findings mirror several transactions first brought to light in a 2023 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). That investigation revealed how Chelsea-related payments were channelled through Abramovich’s own companies to artificially reduce costs, possibly subverting the league's spending limits and giving the club an unfair competitive advantage.
In 2022, the U.K. government imposed severe financial sanctions on Abramovich following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions forced the billionaire to sell the club he had transformed into a global powerhouse.
In May 2022, a consortium led by Todd Boehly, Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter, and Hansjörg Wyss acquired Chelsea. Upon taking control, the new ownership group voluntarily self-reported the potential historical violations to the Premier League.
The club has been paying for the Abramovich era's financial maneuvering ever since. In 2023, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) fined Chelsea 10 million euro ($11.5 million) for submitting incomplete financial information during the 2010s. England’s Football Association (FA) issued its own charges against the club last September regarding payments to unregistered agents. That disciplinary process remains ongoing.
In a statement released Monday, Chelsea noted that it was pleased to reach a settlement regarding the historical, self-reported regulatory matters. The club emphasized that it had fully cooperated with all regulators and maintained that, even with the hidden payments, there was no scenario in which it would have breached the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules during the seasons in question.
