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Chelsea Football Club have been slammed with a £10million fine and a suspended one-year ban on signing first-team players by the Premier League over financial rule violations linked to the period when Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich owned the club.
The sanctions, announced on Monday, also include a nine-month restriction preventing Chelsea from registering new academy players.
According to details of the ruling, the one-year transfer ban on first-team signings will remain suspended for now but could be activated if the club is found to have committed further financial breaches within a specified monitoring period.
The penalties follow investigations into financial irregularities that occurred during Abramovich’s ownership of the West London club before he was forced to sell it in 2022.
League investigators reportedly uncovered transactions and financial arrangements that did not fully comply with the Premier League’s financial reporting regulations during the Abramovich era.
The club was subsequently sold in 2022 to a consortium led by American businessman Todd Boehly, whose ownership group has since cooperated with authorities reviewing Chelsea’s historical financial dealings.
Meanwhile, the financial controversies surrounding Abramovich have continued beyond his departure from the club.
Four days ago, Sky News reported that the frozen proceeds from the sale of Chelsea are currently under investigation in the Crown dependency of Jersey over concerns that parts of the funds could potentially constitute proceeds of crime.
The probe relates to the sanctioned oligarch and not the current Chelsea ownership, but it has further complicated efforts to release the funds for humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Accounts published by Fordstam Limited — the parent company through which Abramovich owned Chelsea — show that proceeds from the club’s sale now stand at about £2.407billion, although the funds remain frozen.
Documents filed with Companies House indicate that Fordstam and its shareholder only intend to donate about £987million to a charitable foundation after loans are repaid, far below the roughly £2.5billion the British government wants released to support victims of the war in Ukraine.
Complicating matters further, the accounts reference judgments from the Jersey Court in November 2025 indicating that funds linked to Camberley International Investments Limited — a company connected to Abramovich — may be affected by a criminal investigation initiated by the island’s attorney general.
Abramovich’s Jersey-based company is reportedly owed about £1.429billion from an interest-free loan previously provided to fund Chelsea.
The investigation, launched in April 2022, is aimed at determining whether certain assets linked to Abramovich may constitute proceeds of crime.
Abramovich has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime in any jurisdiction.
However, the dispute over the frozen funds has intensified, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging Abramovich to approve the release of the full proceeds from the club’s sale for humanitarian relief in Ukraine and warning that legal action could follow if the impasse continues.
At the centre of the dispute are disagreements over who should control the distribution of the funds and how much should ultimately be released.
While Abramovich has insisted that the money should support “all victims of the war in Ukraine,” the UK government has maintained that the funds must go specifically to vulnerable people inside Ukraine.
The sale of Chelsea was carried out under strict oversight by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, with the understanding that the proceeds would be used for humanitarian purposes.
Until a licence is granted by the sanctions authority, the billions generated from the club’s sale remain locked and unusable.
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