Vladimir Putin had no say in buying Chelsea - Abramovich's lawyer

Thu 29 July 2021 | 15:21

Roman Abramovich's lawyer has told the court that Vladimir Putin had no involvement in his client's purchase of Chelsea in 2003.

British journalist Catherine Belton recently published a book entitled "Putin's People" about Putin coming to power, while the Russian president is said to have helped Abramovich to buy Chelsea Football Club.

The ordinary and reasonable reader would inevitably come out with the view that Roman Abramovich was instructed to buy Chelsea, so he was being used as the acceptable face of a corrupt and dangerous regime,”

he said

"At no stage is the reader told that actually Abramovich is someone who is distant from Putin and doesn’t participate in the many and various corrupt schemes that are described. On the contrary, he’s described as making corrupt payments.”

Chelsea owner's representative also issued a statement calling for Abramovich's name to be cleared immediately, adding that the defence presented by Belton's lawyers in court did not match with what she was written in the book.


The defendants emphasised that the named individual who suggested that Chelsea Football Club was purchased as the direction of president Putin was someone 'prone to overstating his role' and argued that the readers would take his credibility into account when reading the book,"

the statement read.

"They did, however, not explain why this individual has such a central role in the book. Although it is helpful to have the defendants' clarifications - their position in today's hearing does not correspond to what is actually written in the book, and further underscores the need for false and defamatory claims about Mr Abramovich to be corrected as soon as possible."



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source: SportMob