London: The Premier League has punished the London club for years of hidden payments to players, agents and offshore companies — while rewarding the new owners for blowing the whistle on their predecessors, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reports.
Chelsea FC has been slapped with a record £10.75 million fine and a suspended transfer ban after the Premier League found the club guilty of concealing payments made during Roman Abramovich’s ownership — violations that helped secure the signings of some of European football’s biggest names. The club escaped a points deduction.
The club made undisclosed payments between 2011 and 2018 to players, including Eden Hazard and Samuel Eto’o, as well as to unregistered agents and offshore companies, without notifying football authorities. The payments, routed through Cyprus-based entities linked to the billionaire oligarch, were only uncovered when Chelsea’s new American ownership group, BlueCo, flagged financial irregularities during its 2022 takeover.
That self-reporting proved decisive. The Premier League acknowledged it might never have discovered the violations without BlueCo’s disclosures, and cited “exceptional cooperation” and “significant mitigating factors” in sparing the club a points deduction — a punishment that has crippled rival clubs for similar offences.
Beyond the fine, Chelsea received an immediate nine-month academy transfer ban and a two-year suspended ban on first-team signings, which will be triggered by any further rule breaches.
The sanctions cap a damaging period for the club’s reputation. Chelsea were separately fined €10 million by UEFA in 2023 over the same historical transactions and still face 74 outstanding charges from the Football Association over agent regulation breaches. Meanwhile, Abramovich himself remains under criminal investigation in Jersey for corruption and money laundering.
The message from the Premier League is clear: come clean and cooperate, and leniency follows. But the full cost of Abramovich’s era of secrecy is still being counted.