Chelsea Fined £10m and Issued Suspended Transfer Ban for Abramovich-Era Rule Violations

Chelsea have been fined £10m by the FA and served with a suspended transfer ban for multiple violations of transfer rules during the Roman Abramovich era.

The sanction reflects a similar punishment handed to the Blues by the Premier League earlier this year after the club were found to have used unlicensed agents and sought to obscure the nature of their transfer dealings between 2009 and 2022. Deals involving Chelsea legends Samuel Eto’o, Eden Hazard and Willian were among those found to have breached the rules. The commission originally handed down a stronger sanction that would have given Chelsea a suspended six-point deduction, but it was overturned after an appeal by the club.

The offences were self-reported by Chelsea when new ownership entered Stamford Bridge in 2022 and the disciplinary panel praised the club for their actions and cooperation through the hearing. Chelsea, who are also operating under a settlement agreement with Uefa, said they had “worked openly and transparently with all regulators” and were “pleased to confirm that this brings all regulatory proceedings against the club to a close”.

Written reasons published by the FA show the independent commission took a very dim view of the Abramovich-era administration, saying their rule-breaking showed “a shameful and arrogant disregard for the rules of the game … which has done so much to bring the game of football in general, and the name of CFC into disrepute”. They also said, however, that there were aspects of the case brought by the FA that caused them “particular concern”.

While praising the FA’s cooperation on the case, the commission criticised the governing body for both failing to charge individuals related to the misdemeanours and for requesting that a sporting sanction should not be applied as punishment. After a submission by the Premier League, which also argued against a sporting sanction, Chelsea appealed against the commission’s original sanction and the six-point deduction was replaced with a suspended two-window ban on registering new players. While the commission had originally argued Chelsea had sought and gained a sporting advantage from their actions, the appeal board found that there was insufficient evidence to show that any advantage had actually been achieved.

“Chelsea’s lawyers performed a masterclass in non-adversarial diplomacy with both the FA and the Premier League,” said Stefan Borson, a football finance expert who is head of sport at the law firm McCarthy Denning.

“Even where the FA’s independent panel disagreed with the position presented by the FA and Chelsea, it still found a way to discount a 15-point deduction starting point down to a six-point suspended penalty. Ultimately, even that was appealed away, leaving Chelsea to pay a final meagre fine out of its retained escrow from Abramovich’s proceeds.”

The Premier League and the FA had been examining tens of millions of pounds in secret payments made by offshore companies that were owned by Abramovich. Details of the transactions were uncovered as part of Cyprus Confidential, an investigation by the Guardian and international media partners, based on a leak of data from Cypriot financial services firms that the Russian oligarch used to manage his vast fortunes.

Deals revealed by the leak included apparent off-book payments to Hazard’s agent and an associate of the title-winning manager Antonio Conte.

Documents published as part of the finding offer a rare insight into the inner workings of Chelsea’s transfer policy during the tenure of Abramovich. They refer to internal conversations at Chelsea about the purchase of Willian in 2013, a deal agreed at the last minute, after the Brazilian had apparently been set to join London rivals Tottenham. According to the documents, an unnamed senior figure at Chelsea felt that to lose Willian was “not good” and that to lose him to Tottenham was “adding insult to injury”.

In its argument, the FA said the unnamed individual may have “loved the power associated with having a bottomless pocket when it came to acquiring players of great quality and/or with great potential, but to seek to suggest that there was no intention to obtain a sporting advantage is stretching our credulity beyond reasonable limits”.

The rulings published by the FA also reveal for the first time that BlueCo, the consortium that bought Chelsea from Abramovich, reached a multi-million pound settlement with HM Revenue & Customs relating to transactions dating back to 2011. The size of the settlement is redacted in the FA’s case against Chelsea but the appeal board’s decision indicated that the club repaid at least £1.35m.

The FA said that the entirety of Chelsea’s £10m fine will be invested into grassroots football.